Master of the eclectic - Peter Blake
John Whelan
THE FOLLING ARTICLE APPEARED IN CANADA'S
"GLOBE AND MAIL", APRIL 10, 2001.
Master of the eclectic
It's 34 years since his iconic Sgt. Pepper cover, but Peter
Blake remains one of Britain's most vital and outspoken artists
LARRY HUMBER
Special to The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, April 10, 2001
LONDON -- After his near-fatal shooting in 1968, Andy Warhol placed a
large dog, albeit of the stuffed variety, near the door of his New
York studio to discourage unwanted visitors. He was never threatened
again.
Peter Blake -- one of Britain's most famous artists, whose work is
featured in a new show at Paris's Pompidou Centre, titled The Pop
Years: A History of Pop Art, 1956-1968 -- was born in 1932, just four
years after Warhol. And he has his protector too. It is former
heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston. Not the real Liston, of
course -- he's been gone some 30 years -- but a wax look-alike that
was once displayed at Madame Tussaud's in London.
It stands guard in Blake's sprawling studio in southwest London --
and it's the same Liston figure that graces the cover of the Beatles'
monumental 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, on
which he can be seen at the far left of the album jacket, wearing a
white robe and partly obscuring a waxwork of George Harrison.
It was Blake and former wife Jann Haworth who created that cover for
the Fab Four almost exactly 34 years ago, on March 30, 1967 -- and
for which they were paid a mere £200 (about $450). Although they
reasoned at the time that recognition would be their main reward,
today Blake is irked that he got so little for what is considered one
of the classic album designs of all time.
In fact, during a recent interview that was as wide-ranging and
eclectic as Blake's creative output, he made it clear that he'd
rather not talk about Sgt. Pepper any more -- "It's frustrating" he
says -- before going on to discuss how he helped choose the cover
personalities.
Among his selections were Shirley Temple, Dion (of The Belmonts) and
German-born pop artist Richard Lindner, one of Blake's own early
inspirations. He still has the Lindner figure, as well as one of
British comic Max Miller (who stands directly behind the wax George
Harrison, while Lindner is two rows behind him, next to Karl Marx).
The others have long since vanished -- as, of course, has the real
Warhol, whom Blake used to bump into over the years. The two artists
weren't exactly chummy, though. "We never got on," he recalls. "We
were once standing next to each other at a show. He wouldn't talk and
neither would I. . . . Warhol was about destruction," adds Blake. "He
was cynical."
Despite their lack of a friendship, one recurring image did connect
the two men's work: that of Elvis Presley. Warhol did a number of
Elvis paintings, one of which hangs in the collection of the Art
Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Elvis is a familiar figure in Blake's
work, too, appearing in one of his earliest pop paintings, 1961's
Self-Portrait with Badges, which features a poker-faced, denim-clad
Blake clutching an Elvis fan magazine. It is one of several of his
pieces that hang in the Tate Britain -- the old gallery, not the
brash new Tate Modern, which opened last year across the Thames, and
hasn't hung a single Blake.
Even now, the artist is hard at work on an Elvis shrine comprised of
two- and three-dimensional representations of the swivel-hipped
singer, most of which Blake acquired while out shopping. He hopes to
deliver it to his London dealer in the near future. Another
unfinished work -- there are many scattered about his studio -- is
tentatively titled The Day Elvis Met the Spice Girls. Posh and her
friends are nearing completion, but Presley still needs to be
lovingly rendered.
Surprisingly, Blake claims that Elvis's music wasn't really his cup
of tea (and he sips a coffee as he says this). Like a lot of British
hipsters of his generation, he was more into Chuck Berry and Bo
Diddley, both of whom he has also portrayed in his art.
Indeed, music is very much a part of Blake's life, both creatively
and personally. He counts many pop stars among his friends, and likes
to paint to his favourite musicians; lately, the main one of those
has been Macy Gray. Blake and Paul McCartney remain very close more
three decades after Sgt. Pepper, despite the pound-pinching; the
Who's Peter Townshend is another old pal, as was the late British
musician Ian Dury. And when Don Everly of the Everly Brothers got
married in Las Vegas recently, Blake was there.
"It's a fascinating city," he says of Vegas. And it's certainly easy
to see from his work -- and his workplace -- why Blake would be
turned on by what's been branded an adult Disneyland. His studio is
packed with oddments, all under the watchful gaze of the glass-eyed
Liston.
Blake delights in showing off the unusual items that fill the space --
everything from an array of Punch-and-Judy puppets to the boots worn
by General Tom Thumb when he had an audience with Queen Victoria in
1865.
"I've got a big collection of kind of freak material," is how he puts
it.
One of his enduring passions is professional wrestling. He's been a
fan since he was a kid, and still talks fondly of the time he got the
Masked Zebra Kid's autograph. He went on to paint the Zebra Kid,
making use of the signed bit of paper. "It intrigues me as theatre,"
he says of wrestling. "I still love it. It's rather bizarre now,
though."
Half-completed canvasses are everywhere in the studio, including a
series of six he's calling Velazquez's Midgets. Blake began the
series of miniatures while painter-in-residence at the National
Gallery from 1994 to 1996. He's got another series that focuses
on "the prettiest bottoms" in the gallery's collection.
With so many interests, it's understandable that Blake can't seem to
complete one project before he's launched himself into another. Even
one of his signature pieces -- Have a Nice Day, Mr. Hockney, painted
in 1983 -- could use some additional brushwork. A riff on Gustave
Courbet's La rencontre, it shows Blake greeting fellow British artist
David Hockney on a California beachfront filled with blond roller
skaters in bikinis.
Parts of it are executed in Blake's meticulous, multilayered style,
shot through with pink and indigo. On closer inspection, one notices
there's quite a bit lacking: Hockney's face and feet are hardly
hinted at. Other bits just never got done. "It was meant to be packed
with stuff," Blake explains, "but I had to get on to something else.
So I brought it to a conclusion."
There are all sorts of collages in the studio, too, many conceived
while Blake was strolling along beaches or city streets. One is
comprised of stones, shells, bits of driftwood and scraps of paper
and is titled The Beach in Front of David Hockney's.
Blake recently put together a show of his -- and other people's --
collages for the Tate Liverpool. It wrapped up in early March after
nearly a year's run. McCartney was one of the many who took in the
exhibition, even contributing a piece.
For all his exposure, Blake says that he has been feeling
underappreciated lately. True, there's been Liverpool; and he's
featured in the new Pompidou Centre show, which is up until mid-June.
But he's miffed that the new Tate has none of his work. That may
partly explain his disdain for the place, whose design by Jacques
Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Switzerland recently won them the 2001
Pritzker Architecture Prize. "I like to be uplifted," he said. "I've
been there three times and I've always come away feeling grumpy."
His dealer -- Waddington Fine Art -- further dampened his spirits by
telling him his work was "unfashionable." And he's been catching flak
from members of the prestigious Royal Academy over the past while.
Blake is senior hanger -- or selector -- for this summer's edition of
the academy show, and he's told academy veterans to limit their
submissions to four (they are usually allowed six) so that he can
allot more space to younger artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey
Emin. This has upset some artists, but Blake remains
unrepentant. "The RA," he says "is middle-of-the-road and elderly."
Those may seem like odd words from a man who's pushing 70. But then
again, age seems a relative thing in his case. After all, he still
paints every day. "My purpose in art," he says, "is to make magic and
celebrate." In his inimitable way, that's what Peter Blake has never
stopped doing.
-- end of article.