Rush Hour
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.
Artwork Details
- Title: Rush Hour
- Artist: George Condo (American, born Concord, New Hampshire, 1957)
- Date: 2010
- Medium: Acrylic, graphite, charcoal, and pastel on canvas
- Dimensions: 83 5/16 x 73 1/8 in. (211.6 x 185.7 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: George A. Hearn Fund, 2011
- Object Number: 2011.306
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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