Mental States: George Condo at the Hayward Gallery by Ben Addicott

Photo: Linda Nylind

The coupling of shows at the Hayward Gallery does throw up some issues. Beside the sensory explosion of Pipilotti Rist’s show downstairs – that most visitors will either see first, or at the very least walk through – Condo’s show does initially suffer. The sheer scale and immersion of its twin leaves this more traditional canvas and wall hangings display a little overwhelmed. But once the afterimages have faded there is a great deal to entertain and enliven in these rooms.

To those who know Condo as a painter of portraits, the entrance to this exhibition will come as some surprise. The inaugural work greeting you, as you emerge into the relative starkness of the upper floor, is the first in a collection of golden busts. Gilded to give the impression of treasure excavated from the ruins of a lost civilisation, they stand neatly in file as though awaiting inspection. The busts are three dimensional manifestations of the twisted and tragic figures that populate Condo’s visual language, a significant point in two ways. They serve to introduce the newcomer, face to face as it were, to some of the artists reoccurring characters. On a deeper level though, they highlight one of the motivations that makes Condo such an influential figure.

Beginning his career in one of Warhol’s legendary Factory studios, George Condo was surrounded by artistic royalty from an early stage. He compounded this thoroughly contemporary influence with extensive study of the Old Masters and developed a style and approach which has led him to being dubbed the artist’s artist. Condo makes art that acknowledges art, sometimes patently (Rembrandt and Picasso are both name-checked in titles), sometimes stylistically (Goya, Velásquez and Millais to my amateur eye), but consistently either way. While in the Post-modern age there’s nothing too unique about this, his winning stroke is to invest into the conceptual play a depth of emotion and psychological exploration that belies its almost simplistic surface.

Photo: Linda Nylind

Condo, in a reference to Aldous Huxley’s essay Heaven and Hell, classes his characters as ‘antipodal beings’. Antipode in this sense describes an area of the mind, reachable by meditation, psychoactive drugs, deprivation or flagellation, where objects are pure and entirely self referential. This is the well spring for Condo’s work and the natural habitat of his characters. Big Red, the first of the ‘Pods’ is attendant in the show, sneaking into the Expanding Canvas series (1985) and taking spot-lit centre stage in Red Antipodular Portrait (1996). Other Condo regulars Jean-Louis (aka The Butler) and Rodrigo [a 'scoundrel and a parking lot attendant'] appear throughout in works like The Fallen Butler (2009) and The Infernal Rage of Rodrigo (2008). This consistency, combined with the comic visuals, creates the literary familiarity which has figures like Salmon Rushdie and Will Self drawing directly from his work.

George Condo: The Stockbroker, 2002 Oil on canvas 243.8 x 203.2 Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan © George Condo. Image courtesy Luhring Augustine

In this way his creations are not reflections of society but expulsions of something internal and fully formed. That the relationship is non-consensual makes it all the more fascinating. Whether contrivance or candid truth Condo gives you the sense that he wants rid of them. The latest pieces, Racing Forms and Spatial Figures (both 2010), reveal the first signs that they may soon leave him alone. Realism is starting to creep back in the form of recognisable faces and figures, while the ‘Pods’ are fading, blurring into the background.

The only fault comes, as is so common, in the accompanying text. Not the booklet, mind. Those six pages are a vital key to the work and the world that lies behind and around it. The trouble is that the adaptations of this enlightening text that adorn the walls either sell the work short or displace the emphasis. In particular, the Mania and Melancholy portion of the exhibition is branded a ‘biting commentary on our contemporary culture’s noisy and continuous stream of scandals, meltdowns and celebrity shenanigans’. While admirable for its use of the word ‘shenanigan’, this seems an unreasonable interpretation. As far as I can tell his interests are never so tied to the zeitgeist. Condo talks about broader internal conflicts that have been a constant in the human psyche since the dawn of the great civilisation experiment.

This provides a decent line in to understanding the Queen portraits, probably the most publicised aspect of the exhibition. At first they stand out uncomfortably from the otherwise self referential, fantasy of the majority. However, if read as an act of social levelling, the Queen as a human rather than a figurehead, the division falls away. For Condo, we’re all in the gutter, full stop.

Exhibition ends: 8 January 2012

The Hayward Gallery

Southbank Centre,

Belvedere Road,

City of London

SE1 8XX

020 7960 4200