An unknown artist now known

Driving while listening to Radio 4 - an increasingly common choice from the handful of available stations remaining after an unwise carwash decision, I caught the end of an interviewee passionately discussing the art, works & life of artist Frank Auerbach who's death the previous day had been announced. 

I didn't recognise the name and was unsure of its spelling given its, to me, unusual pronunciation but the passion of the interviewee and her assurance that his art would survive him caused me to make a mental note to check him out. Doing so I discovered that he had indeed lived a remarkable life but it was  the description of his painstaking method of painting that really stood out, the habit of starting each day by scraping off the paint of the day before and starting afresh on the same canvas, continuing the laborious process for weeks, months, sometimes years until the raw truth of the subject was revealed to him.

Almost as remarkable was the realisation that in searching for images of his paintings, I immediately recognised the style, being identical to the cover of a long treasured album from the band Japan, Oil on Canvas pictured above. Sure enough the release had used one of his paintings, Head of J.Y.M II created in 1980, a couple of years before the album's 1983 release.

I was not a huge fan of Japan at the time but for some reason I had bought and enjoyed this double album and the subsequent Exorcising Ghosts compilation on release. I eventually replaced it with it's CD re-master in 2003, which on checking doesn't appear to credit Auerbach as the artist, although the original vinyl sleeve may have?. 

(This incredibly insightful article goes into great detail about how Sylvian may have first encountered Auerbach's work and how it led him to use it on the album).

The Oil On Canvas album ultimately led me in the early 2000's to belatedly follow the solo releases and career of Japan's lead singer, David Sylvian which I continue to find rewarding, (along with the music of Vangelis), as a motivating soundtrack to my own creative endeavours. 

However it is only now, sadly on his death, that I now know the name of the enigmatic artist behind the album's distinctive artwork which has been in my collection for more than 40 years and I look forward to discovering more about the man and his art, Frank Auerbach.