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If your first inclination upon seeing George Condo’s Dancing to Miles is to look for Waldo, then you’re probably on the wrong website.

It makes sense that George Condo would title this painting, Dancing to Miles (referring to Miles Davis) because one of Davis’ many nicknames was the “Picasso of Jazz” and Condo is a cubist of sorts. He’s not quite the proper cubist that Picasso was, but more of a “psychological cubist,” meaning that he would take all of the different emotions of a scene and morph it into one person. It’s really a lot more terrifying than cubism ever was. And apparently he also morphs together the styles of artists who came before him because this painting alone “allud[es] to painters such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, and Willem de Kooning.”

The real message here is that Miles Davis was “the personification of restless spirit, always pushing himself and his music into uncharted territory.” Similarly this work, “is of frenzied existence, fraught with turbulence and decay.” And though it is rather cocky to compare yourself to one of the greatest jazz musicians to ever live, Condo doesn’t suck. This painting is kind of the fine art version of a Miles Davis song. “Condo finds metaphoric footing in jazz and a complexity in cubism mixed with pop art and conceptual critique.” Go George!

Arguable the most impressive part of this painting though is that it’s humongous. Standing at 9 ft by 11 ft, even if you don’t hear jazz when you see it, you’re likely to be wide-eyed at its sheer size in comparison to little old you.

 

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