stroke magazine

WHEN CONDO WENT WEST

A look at one of artist George Condo’s most polarizing projects
As the 15th anniversary of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy approaches, Stroke Magazine revisits the five striking covers George Condo created for what remains one of the most defining albums of the 21st century.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy main cover by George Condo
The Portrait by George Condo (2010, United States) The Portrait.
A portrait of Ye shows a dark, twisted mind.

The painting depicts a monstrous, almost puppet-like head with distorted features: bulging eyes, a cavernous, screaming mouth, and multiple sets of teeth. Here, Condo renders the face as a site of disintegration, its features fractured into a clamor of eyes, teeth, and voids. The gaping mouth operates as both scream and abyss, a portrait of anguish that borders on caricature.

The painting collapses a self-portrait into monstrosity, destabilizing any sense of identity. Its manic energy aligns with the idea of the dismantling of the ego, which is central to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The work presents the figure as both powerful and undone. The grotesque becomes not merely aesthetic, but psychological.

The portrait of Ye, juxtaposed with the deep blue background, carries a sense of rage, hysteria, and almost of theatrical performance, as well as the extremes of ego and torment.
The Severed Head by George Condo
The Severed Head by George Condo (2010, United States) The Severed Head.
A dramatic, Shakespearean tale. The work shows the severed head of a crowned “king” lying on the ground with a sword plunged through it. Drops of blood scatter nearby, while the background sky is tranquil and almost optimistic of a beautiful day.

The crowned head pierced by a sword stages a stark meditation on power and its undoing. The crown, emblem of sovereignty and triumph, sits askew on a decapitated figure whose expression is frozen in a campy, cartoonish horror. The pristine sky intensifies the violence, casting the scene as a grotesque coup played out on stage. In Condo’s lexicon, the image destabilizes heroic imagery, parodying kingship. It’s where cubism and classicism are merged into a single painting. “His tragedy was a kind of exile that Kanye imposed upon himself,” says Condo.

He’s lost his head, not his mind.
A fallen reign, with empire in ashes, yet the crown remained, both untouched and eternal.
The Portrait, Paranoid by George Condo
The Portrait, Paranoid by George Condo (2010, United States) The Portrait, Paranoid.
The figure wears what looks like an unmistakably priest-like black clerical. Its head is grotesque: bulging cheeks, asymmetrical eyes, wild tufts of hair, and multiple screaming mouths filled with jagged teeth. The deep black and blue background is dark and gridded, giving it an almost crucifixion-like framing.

The gaping central mouth, rendered with deep shadows and violent red accents, becomes the gravitational center of the piece, pulling the viewer’s gaze into its abyss. It evokes a silent scream, or perhaps a scream too loud to contain within a single mouth. Multiple mouths, teeth, and eyes erupt across the visage, contorting the head into a surreal chimera of emotional extremes. He is rage, mania, repression, comedy, and terror all in one.

The screaming priest is not a single emotion, but a fractured portrait.

He’s both the preacher and the heretic.
The Ballerina by George Condo
The Ballerina by George Condo (2010, United States) The Ballerina.
The image depicts a French woman raising a glass of red wine, with a sort of distorted face, in a state of celebration.

The wine elevated by her feminine left arm in receptivity, perhaps, receptivity to defiance. The ballerina operates as a study in contrasts: she signifies refinement and fragility, yet her casual act of drinking unsettles the viewer, destabilizing the expected codes of grace. This juxtaposition reveals an unraveling beneath the polished exterior. It’s a hidden wound that complicates her poise. As such, she functions as a Black Swan, where beauty is inextricably bound to distortion and darkness.

It is a “toast to the scumbags,” Ye proclaims as he is greeted with the work Condo has painted. The idea was conceptualized when George Condo’s wife, Anna, showed Ye a photo of French dancer Sylvie Guillem moving in slow motion. The work emphasizes the dynamics between power and fragility

The most recognizable uncensored album covers.
Oui, Salud!
The Pixilated Cover by George Condo
The Pixilated Cover by George Condo (2010, United States) The pixilated cover.
The image depicts a nude Ye on a couch, being straddled by a nude, winged, armless woman. A fragment between a sphinx, phoenix, haunting ghost, and harpy.

This image stages an allegory of excess and rupture: the male figure, grotesquely rendered with snarling teeth, and the winged female nude embody both ecstasy and violence. Their coupling collapses boundaries between the oppositions. It is angelic and demonic, sacred and profane. Condo’s distortion destabilizes desire, presenting intimacy as both carnivalesque and menacing. The bottle clutched in the figure’s hand reinforces a vision of indulgence, intoxication, and self-destruction. In this way, the composition operates as a parable of beauty undone by its own appetite. The cover was immediately banned by Wal-Mart and iTunes for its sexual depiction.
The banning of the cover brought Condo great disgust. “The superimposition of people’s perceptions on a cartoon is shocking,” and “What’s happening in their minds should be banned, Not the painting” insists Condo.

And he is absolutely right. Nothing about this album is conservative; everything is being put on display. There is no point in censoring a work that is already provocative in lyrics and controversial in plea.
Fifteen years on, these paintings remain just as polarizing as they were in 2010. Controversies aside, the record My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a sonic odyssey through Ye’s psyche. It is glamorous, paranoid, egotistical, and self-loathing all at once. He exposes himself as a hero, a villain, a genius, a narcissist. Ye and his perverted grandeur, amalgamated with Condo’s talent, boast one of the most influential bodies of work to date.
Words by Trey Hemmings