Kanye Hugged: A Little Moment With Mr. West at the George Condo Opening
By Nate Freeman
We were standing in front of the titan of pop music at a party last night to celebrate artist George Condo’s first retrospective, Mental States, which opens today at The New Museum. Condo is known for painting his subjects as wild-eyed gaping clown faces, cheeks and foreheads flushed with spiky brushstrokes that intimate explosion, and always featuring distinctive askew-splayed bucked teeth. The most famous of these subjects is Kanye West, whom Condo depicted in flagrante delicto on the cover of his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (another Condo was used as the official album art, however, after Kanye tweeted that the more racy choice had been “banned” by someone).
“I don’t talk to the fuckin’ press!” Kanye West told The Observer.
With that we walked off, thinking incorrectly that we would not speak to Kanye West again that night.
Others at the party were more chatty than the hip-hop star. We ran into a be-stubbled James Frey coming down the extra-slim white hallway that took the art patrons to the main exhibition room. Marc Jacobs sauntered around pecking everyone on the cheek, allowing the stray whiskers of his fuchsia and aquamarine fur scarf to nuzzle against their noses.