TATE MODERN
This is the ninth in a series of original music tracks written about artworks at Tate Modern.
Tate invited Man Like Me to walk around the gallery and find a work of art that would inspire him to write a track.
In the end, it was Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain that grabbed his attention. He said "Something just clicked. I loved the cheeky nature of the idea and I knew I could write something about the piece and this is the result."
Musically, Man Like Me has a vast and broad insight for someone his age. From his early escapades into drum 'n' bass, he has embraced a wide variety of influences, from Scott Walker, Prince, Studio One, Kate Bush, Van Morrison, the Beach Boys and the Specials, through to Daft Punk, Lady Sovereign, Kano, Antony & The Johnsons and Roll Deep. MLM makes a sound that will pioneer the pop music of today. It’s new, fresh and full of attitude. The sound he produces is electronic, pop, and 2-tone - you won’t have heard anything quite like it.
With guest spots from Suggs Madness and remixes by Williams, Roll Deep and a Guy Called Gerald, MLM is 'sensibly not aligned to any one 'scene'. (Time Out). Man Like Me has recently racked up some great media coverage with a Live Radio One Sessions for Rob Da Bank, endless plays on Zane Lowe, Jo Whiley's show and a BBC 6 Sonic Safari with The Queens of Noize, features in Dummy Magazine, Vice, I –D magazine for NIKE, Time Out, Electronic Beats, plus a multitude of rave reviews in Mixmag, DJ magazine, Metro and The Guardian Guide.
Fountain is the most famous of Duchamp's so-called ready-made sculptures - ordinary manufactured objects designated by the artist as works of art. It epitomises the assault on convention and accepted notions of art for which Duchamp became known. The original, which is now lost, consisted of a standard urinal, laid flat on its back and signed with a pseudonym, 'R. Mutt 1917'. This work is one of a small number of replicas which Duchamp authorised in 1964, based on a photograph of the original by Alfred Stieglitz.
You can view this work in the Tate Collection.
Born in France, Duchamp's early figure paintings were influenced by Matisse and Fauvism, but in 1911 he created a personal brand of Cubism combining earthy colours, mechanical and visceral forms, and a depiction of movement which owes as much to Futurism as to Cubism.
His Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2, 1912 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), created a sensation at the 1913 New York Armory Show. Duchamp did very little painting after 1912, creating the first of his 'readymades' in 1913. These were ordinary objects of everyday use, sometimes slightly altered, and designated works of art by the artist. His earliest readymades included Bicycle Wheel (1913), a wheel mounted on a wooden stool, and a snow shovel entitled In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915).
One of his best-known pieces is a urinal, titled Fountain and signed 'R. Mutt', which he submitted to an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York in 1917. In the ensuing controversy, the concept of the readymade became associated with an assault on the conventional understanding of the nature and status of art.
Duchamp also used readymades as parts of a private symbolic language. He spoke of how using prefabricated objects freed him from the 'trap' of developing a particular style or taste.
You can learn more about Marcel Duchamp in the Tate Collection.
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