George Condo

George Condo appears in two brief diary episodes as both an emerging artist and a newcomer to a crowded social circle. The accounts set the scale of his early recognition—Bruno Bischofberger bought about 300 of his paintings—beside the awkwardly comic uncertainty of a dinner where more than one person seemed to have been invited for him.

Introduction and Early Recognition

When Keith Haring could not come down, he invited the diarist’s party to visit him while George Condo was working there. Condo was described as a new artist who made small works. The diary’s attention to his modestly sized pieces establishes an initial impression of his practice, though it gives no further account of their style or subject matter.

Condo’s prospects seemed to change sharply through Bruno Bischofberger, who had just signed him and bought roughly 300 paintings. The diary places this substantial purchase beside the incongruous report that Condo had a room below Nick Rhodes at the Ritz-Carlton New York. Its surprise depends on the contrast: the image of a poor artist gives way to one of a newly recognized artist already situated in a conspicuously fashionable setting.

A Dinner Complicated by Introductions

At a dinner attended by around ten or eleven people, Condo and Paige were getting along. The evening’s social arrangement shifted when Kenny Scharf had invited Carole Davis for Condo; she arrived after dinner. Davis, an actress who had played the Jewish girl in The Flamingo Kid, became the hit of the gathering, and her arrival left Condo confused about who his date was supposed to be.

Davis’s stories helped make her the evening’s focus: she talked about cosmetic surgery and said that her best scene in The Flamingo Kid had been cut. She also said Matt Dillon had not related to her. The diary records these details through the dinner’s comic succession of introductions and competing expectations, rather than presenting Condo’s confusion as a serious dispute.

Art-World and Social Position

Together, the episodes sketch Condo through two kinds of connection. In the first, Bischofberger’s signature and large purchase mark the sudden material recognition of a new artist; in the second, Condo’s easy rapport with Paige and his uncertainty when Davis arrives place him inside a sociable network where invitations can overlap. Neither account develops a fuller biography, but their juxtaposition captures an early profile formed as much by patrons and company as by the small paintings he made.