George Condo valuation
Old Master technique in the service of faces that have come apart.
George Condo was born in New Hampshire in 1957, studied music theory and art history, briefly worked in Andy Warhol's Factory printing Myths, and spent the 1980s in Cologne and Paris studying European painting seriously.
What a work by George Condo is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Bio
George Condo was born in New Hampshire in 1957, studied music theory and art history, briefly worked in Andy Warhol's Factory printing Myths, and spent the 1980s in Cologne and Paris studying European painting seriously. He calls what he does Artificial Realism and Psychological Cubism: portraits painted with the surface, glazing and confidence of the Old Masters, of figures whose faces have been pulled into several conflicting expressions at once — bulging eyes, bared teeth, cheeks displaced. He collaborated with Jean-Michel Basquiat and William Burroughs, and designed the cover of Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010.
The painting market is led by the large multi-figure canvases and the single portrait heads of the 2000s onwards, with the black-and-white and drawing-based works forming a distinct and more accessible tier. Condo draws constantly and the works on paper — pastel, crayon, ink, often on a coloured ground — are numerous and are frequently the strongest value in the output. There is a modest print market. Because he reworks canvases over long periods, dates on the reverse sometimes span years, and that is original rather than a sign of alteration.
Pastels, and what framing does to them
The works on paper are a large part of this output and the pastels are the part most often damaged by ordinary care. Pastel sits on the surface as loose pigment: it offsets onto glass, it smudges under a finger, and it cannot be dry-cleaned or re-hinged the way a print can. Losses are frequently caused not by accident but by reframing — glass laid straight onto the surface, a sheet pressed flat, a drawing taken out and put back by somebody treating it as paper rather than as powder.
If a work is framed and looks sound, the useful thing is to leave it alone and photograph it through the glass, square on and without flash. If it is loose, keep it flat and interleaved and do not stack anything on it. A pastel that has never been interfered with is worth materially more than the same image after a well-meant reframing.
Best auction results
- Force Field HK$53.15m
- Painted in 2010 · Hong Kong · 10 July 2020
- Publicly reported
- About US$6.85m, and the artist's auction record.
- Antipodal Reunion £1,035,000
- Painted in 2005 · London · April 2020
- Publicly reported
- Sold in an online-only sale, which was unusual for a painting at this level at the time.
Results as reported at the time of sale, inclusive of buyer's premium. They are a record of what specific works achieved on specific days, not a guide to what any other work is worth.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
