The Shepherd

'George Condo has explored the outer suburbs of acceptability while making pictures that, for all their outrageous humour, are deeply immersed in memories of European and American traditions of painting. Reworking outmoded pictorial techniques and styles in oil and varnish, he has fashioned a polyphonic terrain of cross-reference that ranges from the Renaissance to the Baroque, from Tex Avery cartoons to Cubism and Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop. Rather than being burdened by history, he seems liberated by it. Characterised by a fearless and unbridled approach to subject matter, his work has often made the general range of contemporary image-making seem narrow and constrained by comparison Forged from fragments of art-historical memory, these portraits wantonly commingle elements of the beautiful and the grotesque, provoking a kind of mental whiplash that unhinges the hold such categories have on our perception.' (R. Rugoff, 'The Mental States of America', George Condo Mental States, exh. cat., London, Hayward Gallery, 2011, p. 11).