how george condo makes a painting

[Music] so one thing i can say is that art is one of the most sort of um truthful uh experiences and truthful things that we have in our world today is that art is the truth and everything else is a lie i feel like as much as any other painter working today george condo is somebody who still deserves every single new pair of eyes on him [Music] i think that most people who would be watching this probably saw his art for the first time in the same place i did the series of paintings he did for my beautiful dark twisted fantasy or even for travis are some of his best especially to be used as an introduction but to really get it the way george approaches painting and to understand the covers better i think you have to look past them a little bit [Music] george is one of those artists who can dazzle you with technical ability and a seemingly endless pocket of references that leaves you so oblivious to the influences so obvious before you it feels like art that transcends its context [Music] strangers [Music] there's a really common saying when it comes to art and it's probably used way too much but basically it says that good artists copy and great ones steal i think it's almost true with george you see i've often asked myself if you want to be like somebody should you adopt their persona or should you adopt their philosophies and i've always felt that the second one was more correct i think george's work really reflects that kind of an approach one of the things that george has even said about his own paintings was that he desired for them to look like something another artist had painted but mutually have the viewer think that they would have never painted something like this [Music] when you analyze his work you begin to see that not only can he go breaststroke for breaststroke with practically anybody on a technical level but more so conceptually he's among the greatest one of the best examples of this is in the paintings he did for kanye [Music] while speaking not of this painting but of a general approach george talked about how he drew from pablo picasso's cubist period he explained that where picasso would display a subject painted from a range of angles he would attempt to display a subject painted with a range of emotions for example [Music] picasso is definitely george's biggest comparison it's a connection visually and people bring it up all the time and i knew that going into it so i was really surprised to see how many names george brings up in conversation de kooning picasso matisse cezanne kandinsky mondrian barcione and what's more is to see the range of influence that they all had on him not only visually but from a philosophical standpoint too like a lot of artists from george's generation one of the most important books he read early on was gertrude stein's book on picasso [Music] one of the things that the book details is picasso's european training in his early years and george says that while reading that gave him immense hope for his own career seeing as picasso was only in his early adolescence while he was creating these incredible works of art there wasn't any european training available to him he was delivered to realism through abstraction the artistic visual and philosophical rebellion that artists like picasso matisse and cezanne took against their academic training is exactly what artists from george's generation started with to understand some of his paintings better i think it's worth looking into when and where exactly george was in some of his most formative years by the time he was 17 or 18 he had already been studying classical music playing classical guitar and the idea of going to school for art was in many ways unfavorable to him for one thing he didn't want to be criticized but i think even more than that seeing as by that point he had already completed hundreds of paintings he didn't want to be told that he had to start over from the very basics so he decided to pursue classical music theory throughout college and the level at which he was helped to be able to analyze music has proven to still be helpful in his approach and analysis of paintings like his idea of different tempos with an art where certain paintings are just meant to be completed at different paces or even that individual lines are meant to be completed at different paces he even uses the idea of variations in music and thinks of certain paintings in the same way like the idea of variations and music and i thought well there are variations that you could start to work with in paintings and there are different time zones in art that could be equally interchangeable that it doesn't have to be from today today could be you know 100 years from now and today could be like a million years ago it doesn't really matter what really matters is what's there on the canvas at one moment if it wasn't for music george wouldn't have even met jean-michel basquiat in 1979 when he did at a club in new york where the band basquiat was in opened for the girls the punk band george was a part of basquiat was the first person he had met in new york but it wasn't long before he moved to the city and met people like keith herring and andy warhol and it's interesting there's a concept that's used to describe the way in which artists like keith and andy and even matisse like to work it has to do with the line and the way that most notably keith herring tackled his own work he used words like fluidity and flow to describe the continuous lines he would strive for but it was deeper than that it was about following an artistic stream of consciousness this kind of an approach leads to not only cohesive paintings but also just painting quickly george works in the same way not always like keith's continuous lines or andy's jagged linear approach but he starts painting and allows his instincts to guide him in all the videos of george painting he tends to make long confident lines and each one ends up providing more detail than a single line should be able to it was surprising to realize that while george probably gained most of his fame in the 21st century working with kanye he was among some of the most celebrated artistic minds for decades ago and was himself an important figure in that whole new york scene in the 80s and the international revival of art at the time by the late 80s he had already realized his approach towards art in a super in-depth way the term he used to describe it artificial realism that idea about representing reality but reality being a construct of man-made appearances and my whole thing in the early 80s was oh i paint fake masterpieces so i don't have to think about whether or not they weren't i could sort of objectify everything he took a cue from warhol there too there's a story where andy asked his mother what he should paint and she told him to paint what he loved george loves old master paintings so taking direct influence from that story he began painting what he calls his fake old master paintings george's paintings are different than some of his most famous contemporaries or his teachers like picasso george's career spans much longer than the average artist and the amount of output in these years is leaving him with the legacies most painters strive to have but i think more than anyone right now he's managed to make art that transcends its context he makes paintings that call towards popular culture and reference historical events and cliches yet make those same paintings appear as if they could be timeless not in the sense that in 200 years they'll still be as relevant or as well received but in that he makes paintings disregarding time altogether [Music] you

Channel: toodleoo!

Views: 4,504

Keywords: george condo, andy warhol, keith haring, kanye west, kanye west paintings, george condo painting, how to paint like george condo, how george condo makes a painting, my beautiful dark twisted fantasy, franchise travis scott, franchise cover art, jean-michel basquiat, how to make 1980's art, kanye paintings, how to make art like andy warhol, how to paint like andy warhol, andy warhol documentary, george condo documentary, george condo interview, george condo painter interview

Id: VRnz0G_CSE8

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021