6 Figures 2002

This is George Condo's ‘6 Figures,’ an oil on canvas, made sometime in the 21st century. Condo's grotesque figures, rendered with technical virtuosity, invite us to consider the public role of art. Is it to mirror back the most flattering version of ourselves, or to unmask the anxieties lurking beneath social niceties? Painted in the United States, the work reflects a culture saturated with images, where the boundaries between high and low art, beauty and ugliness, are increasingly blurred. It critiques the institutions of art. Condo seems to ask: what happens when the traditional portrait is invaded by the aesthetics of cartoons and the carnivalesque? Is he commenting on the social structures of his time? To fully understand Condo, we might delve into the history of portraiture, the rise of mass media, and the artist’s own biography. Art, after all, is never created in a vacuum, but always in response to a specific social and institutional context.