Rush Hour

George Condo

2010 · Acrylic, graphite, charcoal, and pastel on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

Condo’s art has always paid homage to the masters of the past, from Velázquez and Goya to Pablo Picasso and the Abstract Expressionists. This painting’s crush of commuters contains many of the recognizable characters the artist has developed over the course of his substantial career—including "Rodrigo," the disheveled, mischievous butler whose smoking jacket and bowtie are signature. Their fractured bodies recall the twisting, multiple viewpoints of analytic cubism. Condo’s line-driven composition—he has called this work a "drawing painting"—also seems to echo Arshile Gorky’s color-blocked washes in his landscapes of the 1940s or Willem de Kooning’s early abstractions, wherein bits of flesh peek through a flurry of furious marks.

Artist

George Condo

Date

2010

Medium

Acrylic, graphite, charcoal, and pastel on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

George A. Hearn Fund, 2011