Yankee Doodle, 2003. oil on canvas 60 x 50 in. (152.4 x 127 cm) Signed and dated "Condo, 03" on the reverse.

PROVENANCE Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris
EXHIBITED Cambridge, The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, George Condo, October 15-November 16, 2003 Paris, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, George Condo: Memories of Manet and Velazquez, May 26-July 10, 2004 Washington, Corcoran Gallery, 48th Corcoran Biennial: Closer to Home, February 19-July 22, 2005
LITERATURE P. Fleissig, George Condo: Memories of Manet and Velazquez, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, 2004, cover and pp. 20-21 (illustrated)
The present lot, Yankee Doodle, 2003, "was my response to Manet’s The Fifer, a figure standing in a grey undetermined space reflecting the mood of his national origin. In the case of Yankee Doodle, this is a composite in essentially red, white and blue of a man who was sold a dream that could never be. He is the American – partially Captain Ahab, who was our first mega tragic hero – and he has been endowed with a blown glass golf club, a bottle, and the inventive spirit of Thomas Edison or Ben Franklin. One could also say that Yankee Doodle appears like a hunter 'hunting down' the American dream. As was Ahab. He stands before the viewer seeking neither praise nor criticism. He simply is what he is: that which he became. The carrot symbolizing false hope is his attribute. As for the diagonals if you notice the equestrian portraits of Velazquez, particularly Balthazar-Carlos, he is riding on a foreshortened horse in a diagonal landscape, this portrays the Prince as the Master in his imaginary world in which all the angles are bent to meet the demands of pictorial composition." - George Condo (P. Fleissig, George Condo: Memories of Manet and Velazquez, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, 2004, p. 20)