George Condo's Paintings Are Spontaneous Mind Children

Condo doesn't work from photos or drawings. The paintings take shape spontaneously from his mind, sometimes in just one night. He says:

"Some days, like when I did Big Red, this red antipodular agent, I remember I did it out in the Hamptons. We were out there on a vacation and I did this painting and then I went to bed right after a finished it. And then I woke up in the morning and I forgotten that I had done it, really, because it was late at night. And I got up and I had coffee and I went into the other room and he was just standing there, and I thought 'Where did he come from?' Some of these characters just appear in your life that way, like Big Red, which is his kind of nickname; Jean-Louis, who is this imaginary butler; and then Rodrigo who is this other kind of low-life character. And they live out these fantasy lives, which I would never be able to do myself. I can let them live a life that I could never live. It's like when people watch movies and they see war films and they think, 'What would it be like to be in some medieval battle?' Mel Gibson lives that life in every movie. And then I think Kanye was into in that with his [album] My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy--that was the whole point of the album."

Read the full interview here