Type of Work: Artist Copy, Figure Drawing
Fall 2016An artist copy is a reproduction of a work by another artist. The reproduction is often made in the same medium and made to the same dimensions as the original. An artist copy is a popular way to hone one’s skills as an artist by focusing on how to create rather than focusing on what to create. In a figure drawing course at the University of Notre Dame, I was tasked with creating an artist copy of any figurative work. Naturally, I wanted to create something quirky, playful, and a little bit unsettling.
I chose to replicate George Condo’s The Fractured Duke. My replica, like the original, is 58.5” x 51.5” in size and was created using wax crayon on paper. This is one of Condo’s lesser-known works, but it still is unmistakably his. All of Condo’s work is fractured and aggressive, characterized by figures whose protruding eyes, bulbous cheeks, proliferating limbs, and disfigured jaws are singular and distinct. In his many paintings and drawings, Condo manages to create a pictorial language characteristically his own, one that investigates the macabre, carnivalesque, and the abject. In The Fractured Duke, deformed and semi-geometric features create a fantastical figure who is grotesque yet oddly appealing. This creature is nightmare-inducing and repulsive, and yet the composition is entrancing and seductive.