George Condo (Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris)

George Condo (born 1957 in Concord, New Hampshire) is an American painter. "Artificial Realism" is Condo's term for his destructured figures with their forced smiles. This "realistic representation of the artificial" transfigures the apparent realism of his portraits with an emotion that invades and deliberately disfigures his paintings; in this way he makes play with countless references to art history and the convulsions of the world we live in. Oil and charcoal on canvas: by borrowing techniques from classical painting (oil and charcoal on canvas), George Condo questions both his own influences—European and American traditions of painting, graffiti, cartoons—and the "subjects" that he paints. His "imaginary portraits" conjure up evident states and feelings: fear of heights, the subject's anxiety and the grotesqueness of life—in short, humanity at its most touching.