Pink Nude in Prison

Famously a studio assistant in Andy Warhol’s studio, George Condo is an assiduous student of art history. Making his mark in the 1980s in a counterpoint to the ocean of consumerism on the streets at the time, Condo makes the historical contemporary. With his own brand of bawdiness, Condo’s paintings ripple with evocative energy, avoiding pretension in his academic approach.

Known best for the Cubist influence of his portraiture, the twisted form of his 1988 work, Pink Nude in Prison, instead recalls the contorted bodies and empty, haunting spaces of Surrealism. The idea of Cubist planes pioneered by Braque and Picasso remains, but is made literal through the application of collage elements. Rather than collapse figure and ground, the collage helps isolate and organize the painting. The figure rests on paper islands floating in the pink ground. From a distance, the impasto in the bottom corner pulls the plane into a space, a color-block orthogonal reinforced by the dynamic treatment of light. Although the figure herself is executed over multiple sheets, suggesting that at least some of the paper elements were executed before painting began, Condo’s deft collage and his treatment of the ground layer resist a step-wise analysis of the surface. Her arm reaches up as if pleading, holding an face with an inscrutable expression. The illegible facial features communicate an angst and anxiety beyond comprehension, and the way her hair falls suggests her hand is holding her face.

The blue-bird day beyond the window offers the eye a rest from the warmth of Condo’s palette. For the figure, it seems no consolation, her drama reinforced by contrasting yellow halo. The window is isolated, on what seems like the last piece of collage. Painted the year after his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, Pink Nude in Prison presents George Condo’s career as he lived between New York and Paris, in the nascency of his collaboration with members of the Beat Generation.