TATE MODERN
Tate Modern invited Graham Coxon to walk around the gallery and find a work of art that would inspire him to write a track.
In the end it was Franz Kline's Meryon which grabbed his attention. He described the abstract black and white painting as being like 'a winding blow to the guts' which offered 'a different type of seeing.' The result is his latest track, Meryon.
You can hear this track in the gallery or here online.
Graham Coxon parted company with Blur in 2002. He had recorded seven albums with them, as their guitarist. Since then he has had a prolific solo career. His fifth album, Happiness In Magazines, was released in 2004 and earned him four Top 40 hits, as well as the ‘Best Solo Artist’ gong at the 2005 NME Awards.
In March 2006, his latest album, Love Travels at Illegal Speeds, was released. It explores all the theme surrounding love, from crushes to infidelity to break-ups.
Aside from being an accomplished musician, Coxon is also an artist. He studied fine arts at Goldsmiths before leaving to pursue his musical career with Blur. He designed the cover for the Blur’s album 13 and has also designed the sleeves for all his own albums.
Graham Coxon is the third in a series of music artists who have written an original track about an artwork displayed at Tate Modern.
This powerful work was painted by Franz Kline in 1960-1 and is a classic example of his mature style.
Great chunks of black paint appear in a loose grid shape and seem to push at the edge of the frame in an awkward manner. The way that the marks are arranged also brings to mind architectural shapes and it has been suggested that the painting may have been inspired by an engraving of a clock-tower by French artist Charles Meryon.
Although the work has a very spontaneous feel, Kline made several preparatory sketches before starting on the final version.
You can view this work in the Tate Collection.
Franz Kline was born in Pennsylvania, US in 1910. He studied painting at Boston University and also in London, before settling in New York.
His early paintings were of urban landscapes in New York and of the mining region where he was bought up. After moving to New York, Kline came into contact with several artists from the Abstract Expressionist group, including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. From 1946, his paintings became more abstract and Cubist in nature and from 1950 onwards he began to produce large abstract paintings in black and white. They often included forms which resembled calligraphy. It was these works which led him to be recognised as an important member of the Abstract Expressionist group.
In some later works, he began to introduce strong colours but he is most remembered for the forceful and severe black-and-white works.
You can learn more about Franz Kline in the Tate
Collection
