Saturday, 22 March 2014

George Condo

George Condo

 http://cityzenart.blogspot.com/2011/01/george-condo.html

With his peculiar, signature brand of cartoonish figuration, George Condo has been celebrated both in the art world and in popular culture, with a 2011 retrospective at the New Museum and album covers for musicians including Kanye West and Danny Elfman. Condo’s work plays much earlier models of realism: Spanish still life painting, royal portraiture, genre painting, and others. The subjects of his portraits are sometimes real, sometimes imaginary, and are often placed into narrative scenes of champagne and cigar debauchery, both modern and antique. He regularly varies his mode of representation within a painting. In his 2010 painting Not Yet Titled Condo alludes to group portraits by Goya and to Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863), with cavorting nudes and men primly dressed in satin smoking jackets. But the faces of all the revelers are made to look like cartoonish, lumpy, keloid grimaces with saw-like teeth and bulging eyes. His mode of social commentary dates back hundreds of years, but his subjects are very often contemporary.

 http://www.phillips.com/search/1/?search=condo


Condo is the recipient of an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Francis J. Greenberger award, and the Annual Artist’s Award from ArtsConnection, New York. He has been included in two Whitney Biennial exhibitions and numerous museum exhibitions` worldwide. Condo’s 2011 retrospective, “Mental States,” traveled from New York to Rotterdam, London, and Frankfurt over the course of the year.
http://www.artspace.com/george_condo?gclid=CMPAxeCMzbwCFREaOgodIHoAIQ

 http://www.aqnb.com/2011/11/07/the-ugly-truth/


George Condo's work is relevant to my 2D course because he shows how you can sharply twist the context of a piece of work by altering specific characteristics. He makes you do a double-take by subtly placing explicit objects and images in his work. Condo's twists give his paintings a dark humor and provide scary surprises.








Shirin Neshat

http://www.tribesandthings.com/2013/04/19/artistic-goddess-shirin-neshat/


http://gladstonegallery.com/sites/default/files/SN_NYT_Nov12.pdf


http://ragazine.cc/2012/10/feminist-art-of-the-middle-east/

Although Shirin Neshat's work is very focused on politics and religion, I love it for its content. Her combination of black and white photographs with calligraphy makes for powerful, elegant pieces of art. By painting onto the photographs (instead of painting the subject directly and then photographing) she's creates a story-like image which is made mystical and captivating by the calligraphy.
Shirin's work is useful for my 2D course because she shows how the simple combination of two different elements (photographs and calligraphy) can have powerful results.