There is a kind of fragmented ornamentation which unfolds that inspires me and I’ve listened to it over and over again while I paint. Re Mineur: _Tombeau De Mezangeau - _ Hopkinson Smith's recording of this French 18th century lute music provides endless sources of light and shadow. _Hopkinson Smith Piéces de Luth du Vieux Gaultier, Suite En D.LA. And I’ve strived to paint that expression on every female face in each of my portraits. I’ve listened to it so many times, I can’t even remember how many. _Alfred Deller _I Saw My Lady Weep (John Dowland) - _ One of the most beautiful and melancholic songs ever written. It propelled me into a schizophrenic, abstract mode of thinking which fit nicely with the kind of paintings I was working on. _Kanye West _POWER - _ This is without a doubt my favourite piece of music written in the last 10 years. Throughout my entire career I've aspired to be as good a painter as he was a guitar player. I highly recommend the live performances with extended solo improvisations, such as Hear My Train, originally released on the Rainbow Bridge album. _Jimi Hendrix _Hear My Train A Comin’ - _ Basically everything he ever did is worth hearing 10 times. That's the kind of effect I'm after when painting the backgrounds of many of my portraits. Listen closely to the drums throughout the song, which sound like rain falling. His sublime impressionistic harmonies compliment Miles' trumpet so beautifully. _Miles Davis _Blue And Green - _ Bill Evans is one of my all time favourite pianists. That shows you the kind of dynamics you can achieve with just two colours when they're the right ones. Just before the break leading into Coltrane’s solo they capture the sound of a 40-piece big band. _Miles Davis _Round Midnight - _ Miles' rendition of Monk's classic ‘Round Midnight has one of the most breathtaking harmonic arrangements I've ever heard using only two instruments. My favourite thing is to put on a record in the studio and to still be painting without noticing the fact that the music has stopped playing for hours and is just running through my head. Here is a selection of masterpieces which in my opinion should inspire any artist to want to make art." There are so many great pieces of music that have inspired me to paint that it’s quite difficult to narrow it down to just 10. "Music is such a huge part of my life, without it I don’t know if I'd ever have painted anything.
We've put George's playlist on Spotify but before you listen to it take a read of what he says about how they inspire him in his work. It's like a delinquent version of classical Greece!" Whether it's by making a fake of an old master or simulated antiquity like the fake gold heads in the Haywary show. The conceptual side of George is sometimes him playing with what the status of what a work of art is. Ralph Rugoff, curator of Mental States Condo's current UK show at the Hayward Gallery says he has an incredible sense of humour. Their pyschological cubist forms are scary, surreal yet, in their own way, rather beautiful. In the early 90s he began referring to his subjects as 'pod people' after the antipodal beings in Aldous Huxley's Doors Of Perception. He takes inspiration from American caricature, old European portraits and Greek Mythology. Painter and sculptor George applies the techniques of the old masters to the grinning, shrunken-headed characters that inhabit his canvasses. This week we tracked down one of our favourite artists, George Condo, and asked him to put together a playlist of the music that's inspired his art over the years.
It's Friday again and time for another Phaidon Muse Music.
The artificial realist painter and sculptor on the music that gets him in a creative mood Portrait of the artist George Condo (left), his painting 'Uncle Joe' (2005) (top right) and Miles Davis (bottom right) who features on the artist's Muse Music playlist George Condo's Muse Music
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