George Condo Returns to Paris with a Monumental Retrospective at MAM Paris

This fall, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris stages George Condo, the most extensive exhibition to date dedicated to the American artist’s prolific career. Organized in collaboration with Condo himself, the show gathers over 200 works—including 80 paintings, 110 drawings, and 20 sculptures—tracing a non-chronological path through his signature themes of art-historical dialogue, figuration, and abstraction. Following the museum’s tributes to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, the exhibition completes a “New York trilogy,” illuminating how Condo—once their contemporary and friend—continues to expand painting’s possibilities. From his early concept of “Artificial Realism” to his explorations of “Psychological Cubism,” the presentation reveals an artist still reinventing form, emotion, and the truth of the human condition through an ever-evolving visual language. 

WW: The exhibition closes what the museum calls a New York trilogy, following Basquiat and Haring. How does it feel to return to Paris as the last of that generation still painting, and to see your work placed in that historical continuum?

George Condo: Given that they were my two closest friends when I was in my early twenties, it’s great that they’ve continued on with Jean-Michel, Keith, and me at the end—as a kind of bookend. Jean-Michel was the most famous, and Keith as well, and now they’ve put me in, which is nice. Honestly, I miss them very much and wish they were still here with us. I can only imagine the great work they would be making. But it feels great. The museum director, Fabrice, is very smart, and we’ve worked very hard on this exhibition.

WW: When did you start working on it?

George Condo: Almost three years ago. It’s been extremely time-consuming, with a lot of editing to bring it down to the right scale for the museum. The space is massive, but you can’t show too many paintings or it becomes sensory overload. So we’ve focused on the most essential works—the ones that make sense spatially and reflect the evolution of how I work. People often think a retrospective should be chronological, but my practice loops back on itself. I might return to an idea ten years later. For example, two drawings from 1975 are in the show, and by 1985, when I could finally afford canvas living here in Paris, I expanded those ideas into paintings.

In the drawing room, there’s a salon-style hang that includes works from the ’60s and ’70s, so visitors can see how those early instincts connect to later pieces. I think it will be fascinating for people to follow that thread.

A Thematic and Visionary Exhibition

WW: The show avoids strict chronology and instead unfolds through recurring themes—art history, figuration, abstraction. Did this non-linear structure reveal anything new to you about the evolution of your ideas?

George Condo: It revealed that I probably didn’t get any better as an artist from when I was five years old. [laughs] I’ve just kept changing how I paint every year.

WW: That means you had the vision from very early on.

George Condo: I suppose so. When I look back at drawings from when I was five, seven, fifteen, I see a kind of purity—before I ever heard about the “art world.” Around 1984 I became aware that there was such a thing, especially through Jean-Michel and Keith, and that changed things. But before that, I just made art. I didn’t think about galleries or sales or markets. This exhibition reminded me how much I want to return to that state—making art for its own sake, not for the art world.

“This exhibition reminded me how much I want to return to that state—making art for its own sake,”

George Condo

WW: That’s such a pure way to create—like when you were five.

George Condo: Exactly. You do it because it’s the only thing you’re truly good at. At a certain point, I realized by process of elimination that making art was the one thing I couldn’t fail at. All the rest—the art fairs, auctions, prices, magazines—none of that existed for me back then. I was just trying to translate whatever was in my mind onto canvas or paper. Nothing stood between me and the work. That’s the feeling I want to get back to now.

WW: The exhibition was conceived closely with Fabrice and the curatorial team. What was that dialogue like?

George Condo: They wanted to emphasize the years I spent in Paris—1984 or ’85 through ’95—since this is where the show is. It’s interesting for the French audience to see what an American artist did here. Jean-Michel and Keith both spent time in Paris, too; Keith and I even shared a studio on Île Saint-Louis. We loved working here in the ’80s.

Beyond that, the curators wanted to identify key passages in my artistic journey. You enter through a room called The Dark Side of Humanity, then move into Artificial Realism, then into the drawings, combinations, and collages. Many of these works haven’t been seen since 1984—my first show with Barbara Gladstone. We borrowed from the Whitney, MoMA, and French collections like the FRAC. Some of these paintings are in public institutions but aren’t widely known. Most people only know an artist for the last couple of years of work. This exhibition brings it all together for the first time.

George Condo in Paris

WW: Regarding Paris from 1985 to 1995, what does the city represent to you now—nostalgia or a new beginning?

George Condo: Both, actually. It’s a mirror of who I was in my twenties and thirties, and it’s also something new. I’ve been revisiting old haunts—restaurants I used to love—and some are still there with the same menu. One favorite is Marco Polo, right across the street from where I lived, above Félix Guattari. He lived downstairs, and we’d often go there together. They’ve expanded now, but it still has the same feeling.

Yesterday we had a little free time and I said to my assistants, “Do you know La Coupole?” They didn’t. I told them, “You have to go—it’s an Art Deco cocktail spot.” We went at five, ordered a choucroute so huge nobody ate dinner afterward. It was perfect.

WW: Good memories.

George Condo: Very good. I also used to go to the Relais Plaza for lunch when I lived at the Bristol. The hotel actually kept my easel from 1987—they’ve made a suite for me with a gold doorknob I designed, and a few of my old canvases are still there. In some ways, I’ve fallen back in love with Paris. When the sky is blue, the city is unbeatable—except maybe during Fashion Week. I know the designers, and I love their work, but I skipped the shows this time.

WW: I’ve noticed you like to come around July 14, Bastille Day.

George Condo: Yes, I love being here for the fireworks. My room at the Bristol used to look out toward the Eiffel Tower, and I’d watch with a glass of wine. It’s beautiful.

In Conversation with Rembrandt, Goya, and More

WW: The exhibition opens with your works in conversation with artists like Rembrandt, Goya, Picasso, and Rodin. What do you continue to learn from those painters, and what do you think you’ve added to that dialogue?

George Condo: I’ve been learning from them since I was a teenager flipping through art books. Coming to Paris and seeing those works in person—Rodin’s sculptures, the Impressionists at the Musée d’Orsay and Jeu de Paume—was transformative.

Rembrandt taught me about color and restraint. Picasso, in a sense, carried on that lineage. Both used limited palettes—browns, blacks, grays—yet created immense depth. When Picasso moved into his musketeer period, you can see the Rembrandt influence clearly. I was fascinated by how Picasso eliminated the division between foreground and background in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The figures and sky exist on the same plane. That idea of collapsing space deeply informed my painting.

“Rembrandt taught me about color and restraint,”

George Condo

I also learned from Rodin’s audacity in sculpture—the emotional charge of form. There’s a large sculpture in this show that nods to his Lovers.

From Caravaggio and the Baroque painters, I learned to use light and contrast. From Raphael and Piero della Francesca, I took the mathematical structuring of composition—the triangles, circles, geometric logic underlying the image. When you remove those lines, what remains is a perfectly balanced gravity. That’s part of the foundation of Artificial Realism: you have an artificial schematic into which you insert realistic figures, achieving harmony through proportion.

In the catalog, there’s a dialogue between me and the philosopher Marcus Steinweg about these ideas—about pre-Socratic thought, Greek proportion, Nietzsche, Heidegger—and how philosophy informs painting.

WW: For each painting, do you approach philosophy that way?

George Condo: In a sense, yes. Each work has its own philosophical core. Sometimes it’s about nothingness and being; sometimes it’s dialectical, like in Deleuze and Guattari’s Mille Plateaux. I’ve read their analysis of Francis Bacon and Jean Genet’s book on Rembrandt, as well as Freud’s study of Leonardo. Those texts give a psychological and literary interpretation of painting, which fascinates me.

Writers create characters—Shakespeare created hundreds. I thought, why shouldn’t a painter do the same? That’s what distinguishes me from Picasso. His portraits depict real people—Dora Maar, Marie-Thérèse, Jacqueline. Mine are entirely imaginary, more like characters from Molière or Balzac. They’re invented, but they live within the painting. You can imagine what they were doing before and after the moment captured on canvas.

Artificial Realism for Today

WW: You coined the term Artificial Realism early in your career. In a world now filled with digital images and algorithmic reality, what does that idea mean to you today?

George Condo: When I coined it, I never imagined how prophetic it would become. The term started as a written definition. Robert Rosenblum once asked me, “What do you call your paintings?” I said, “Artificial realism—a realistic representation of that which is artificial.”

Reality exists independently of perception—it’s there whether we see it or not. Artificiality, by definition, means man-made. So if you realistically depict something man-made, you’re already painting something artificial. I was exploring what Heidegger called presencing—not referencing but bringing something into being.

So in one painting you might sense Goya, Frans Hals, and Franz Kline all at once—a non-chronological freedom of style. It was a declaration of artistic liberty: you could paint like Chardin, but invent your own subject matter.

In the ’70s and ’80s, painting was dominated by minimalism—Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Ryman—where subject matter was rejected. I wanted to restore content and emotion while retaining formal rigor.

There’s a wonderful Glenn Gould lecture about Bach where he says Bach was 400 years late—that his music was rooted in the past. That inspired me. My “fake old masters” were a Duchampian move—paintings that look centuries old but couldn’t possibly be. They might appear like a Poussin from across the room, but when you get closer, it’s clearly by me. It’s both homage and invention.

“It’s both homage and invention,”

George Condo

WW: And Artificial Realism has taken on new meaning in today’s world.

George Condo: Exactly. In the ’80s it was an artistic equation, like E=mc². But Einstein couldn’t have foreseen the atomic bomb. Likewise, I couldn’t have predicted fake news, deepfakes, AI voices—all the artificial realities we’re now surrounded by.

When I painted fake old masters, I never imagined a government built on disinformation. Yet that’s where we are. In America, truth has become elusive. There are too many layers between reality and what we hear. That’s why I say art is the truth and life is a lie. Life has become a kind of deception; art remains honest.

Sports is the same—you don’t know the ending until it happens. Painting is like that too. You start with a blank canvas and don’t know the end until you sign it.

Psychological Cubism in 2025

WW: You also coined the term “Psychological Cubism.” In 2025, as AI and neuroscience reshape our sense of identity, what can painting still reveal about the human mind that technology can’t?

George Condo: Psychological Cubism is my way of showing the internal landscape of a mind rather than just the external face. A photograph captures appearance, but not thought. A person might look serene in a magazine photo while feeling grief or anxiety inside. My paintings show that collision—the simultaneous presence of conflicting emotions.

That’s why I don’t work from life. When you paint from a model, you reproduce what’s visible. But you can’t paint what’s inside someone’s head. Each of us carries dreams, fears, contradictions—those are what I try to show on the surface. That’s the essence of Psychological Cubism.

“Each of us carries dreams, fears, contradictions—those are what I try to show on the surface,”

George Condo

WW: We’re organizing an exhibition during Art Basel Paris called “Human Firsts.” I’ll send you more information.

George Condo: I’d love to see that. The human psyche and condition are central to my work. There’s a room in this show of dark paintings—figures pushed to the edge of existence. One’s called Pushed to the Edge, another The Edge of Madness, another The Consequence of Random Perspectives. When there are too many perspectives at once, the figure collapses into chaos.

Those paintings express empathy for today’s fractured world. We see glamour on magazine covers, but what about the people without food, the bus drivers, the teachers, the nurses? In the Renaissance, painters like Bruegel portrayed common people with dignity. I’m interested in doing that again—perhaps even painting homeless figures, whose makeshift shelters and possessions have a strange beauty and humanity.

When an artist captures these realities, it becomes permanent truth. The news changes every minute, sandwiched between commercials. But a painting holds the moment—it becomes the enduring document of its time.

WW: Do you consider yourself a political artist?

George Condo: Not at all. I’m not political. I’ve never voted. I know people say that’s un-American, that voting is freedom, but I can’t choose someone who might blow up the world. I prefer to stay outside politics and focus on truth through art.

Freedom for the Future

WW: The exhibition spans more than four decades. What remains unresolved for you in painting? What are you still chasing?

George Condo: Freedom. Freedom from convention, from expectation. I think what’s next for me is pure color—paintings without figures, just color and form. I’ve touched on it in backgrounds before, but I’d like to let color carry everything. Not minimalism exactly, but abstraction distilled to its emotional core.

“I’d like to let color carry everything,”

George Condo

WW: Thank you so much for your time, George.

George Condo: Thank you. You’ll see what I mean when you see the show. Then you can tell me—did I get any better?

WW: [laughs] I will. See you at the opening.

George Condo: See you then.