The short version
- The cover of Oxygène is a 30×40 cm watercolour by the French painter Michel Granger. The painting's title became the album's title.
- Granger painted it as part of a series about the damage being done to the planet. By his own account it ran in the comics magazine Pilote in 1972, and in 1976 it hung in the Galerie Marquet in Paris.
- Even Granger tells two versions of who bought it. On 15 September 1976 he and Jarre met and reworked it into a square.
- Granger went on to do the covers of Équinoxe, Rendez-Vous, Chronologie and Oxygène 7–13.
His mother had a question. Why had he named his album after a gas and put a skull on the cover? Jarre told that story to The Guardian in 2018. Oxygène had been turned down by label after label: no singles, no drummer, no singer, tracks that went on for 10 minutes, and French on top of that. And on the front of this unlikely record was the Earth with its skin peeling away and a skull underneath. Granger, in the same piece, admitted it was quite a violent image for a record sleeve.
The painting came before the record
Granger was born on 13 October 1946 in Roanne. According to the French Wikipedia he finished at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon in 1968. The French public broadcaster franceinfo said in 2014 that it was René Goscinny who launched him, by printing his full-page drawings in Pilote. Granger's official biography presents him as a painter who took on today's big ecological subjects before almost anyone else.
"Oxygène" sits right in the middle of that subject. Granger told The Guardian it was part of a series about the damage being done to our planet. In a 2016 interview with Le Petit Bulletin, the Lyon listings paper, he put it more briefly. Ecology was only just beginning, he said, and ecological drawings did not exist yet.
When the picture was first printed is less clear. Granger says Pilote ran it in 1972, and the English Wikipedia follows him. The French Wikipedia says his first Earth pictures appeared in Pilote issue 704 in 1973. BD oubliées, a site that indexes Pilote issue by issue, lists no Granger at all in the 1972 issues and has his picture "Le monde" in issue 704, dated 3 May 1973. We could not establish which issue first carried this painting.
In 1976 Granger had his first major show in Paris, at the Galerie Marquet on the rue Bonaparte. On the wall was a 30×40 cm watercolour called "Oxygène".
Who bought it, and 15 September
There are two accounts of how the painting reached Jarre, and both come from Granger. In the 2016 Petit Bulletin interview he said the actress Charlotte Rampling, Jarre's partner at the time, bought the original and gave it to him. In The Guardian in 2018 he said Jarre bought it, and told him he would love to use it for an album cover. Jarre's side is in The Guardian too: one day, in an art gallery, he saw a painting of the Earth peeling away. This piece does not pick between them.
The date of the meeting is not in doubt. According to the English Wikipedia, the gallery director phoned Granger to say Jarre wanted to meet him. It was 15 September 1976, at 5 p.m.; Granger told Le Petit Bulletin that his notebook says so.
Only one thing changed. Granger reworked the background to make the picture square for the sleeve, and the two of them chose the lettering together. They talked for hours in the evenings, always at the same pizzeria, and then, as Granger remembers it, Jarre went home and composed all night. That autumn, the six-part piece he was building in his kitchen took the painting's name. The English Wikipedia says the title suited the spirit of the music exactly. The kitchen sessions are in our Oxygène piece.
What the picture says
For Granger it was a warning. Under a title that means the air we breathe, the planet's skin comes away and the bone shows through. Jarre told The Guardian he wanted to link the record to nature and environmental issues. In the words the English Wikipedia quotes, though, his way in was poetic and surreal more than political. Four decades later, releasing a sequel, he called the image an ecological warning signal, dark and surreal.
Put the picture next to the music and they do different jobs. The music fills the room with something like surf; the picture shows the planet after that air has gone. Put the record on and hold the sleeve, and your ears are breathing while your eyes look at the place where the breath stopped.
Granger, again and again
It did not stop at one sleeve. Granger told Le Petit Bulletin he made about eight covers for Jarre. Here are the ones we can confirm from the English Wikipedia and Granger's official biography.
- 1976
- Oxygène. The watercolour "Oxygène"
- 1978
- Équinoxe. The painting "Le trac", French for stage fright
- 1986
- Rendez-Vous. Artwork by his long-time collaborator
- 1993
- Chronologie. Cover by Granger
- 1997
- Oxygène 7–13. Granger once more
- 2007
- Oxygène: New Master Recording. A 3D model by Giovanni Bourgeois based on Granger's original
- 2016
- Oxygène 3. With Granger's permission, Jarre had the original turned into a 3D model and shown from another angle
On Oxygène 7–13 in 1997, Granger did the cover for the Oxygène series again, 21 years on. Oxygène 3 in 2016 is not a new painting. According to the music site Synthtopia, Jarre asked Granger's permission to make a 3D model of the original; it is the same Earth, seen from the side. 1976, 2007, 2016: over 40 years, one painting was the face of a record three times.
How to listen: sleeve in hand
- Put on "Oxygène (Part I)", 7:39. For the first minute, just look at the Earth on the sleeve and let the sound fill the room.
- As it moves into "Oxygène (Part II)", take your eyes off the skull and listen for the surf. When the beat comes in, your body moves before you think about the picture.
- Then play the opening of Équinoxe and look at "Le trac". It is the second face the same painter gave Jarre, two years later.
If you send a friend one track, send "Oxygène (Part II)", 7:49. Send this fact with it: the album's name came from a picture, not from the music. The title of a watercolour hanging in a gallery became the title of the record.
Where to get it
If the sleeve is the point, get the LP. The 1976 French original carries the picture just as Granger squared it off. The back-cover photograph on the original is by David Bailey; according to the French Wikipedia, the French reissue used a picture of Jarre taken by Charlotte Rampling instead. Turn the lights off and put the record on. On the sleeve the Earth is still peeling, and after 50 years it is still holding its breath.
