Peter Blake, RA (British b. 1932)
Since his emergence in the early 1960s as a key member of the burgeoning Pop Art movement, Peter Blake has been one of the best-known British artists of his generation. He remains one of the very few artists who have achieved both genuine popularity and critical appreciation. His 1961 'Self-portrait With Badges' (Tate, London), where he stands in his denim jeans and jacket, wearing Converse trainers and holding an Elvis album, is one of the iconic images of the time, but Blake's reputation from the outset, reflecting his broad art education, was based on working across media. He has produced collage, sculpture, engraving and printmaking, as well as commercial art in the form of graphics.
Blake graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1956, a few years before David Hockney and Allen Jones. The same year, he was awarded the Leverhulme Research Award and studied folk art in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain. In 1958 he obtained the prestigious Guggenheim Painting Award.
During the late 1950's, Blake was quick to seize the implications of the works of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and under their influence, took one stage further the object quality of his own works. The collage paintings and ready-made objects initiated by Blake in 1959, a full two or three years before the term Pop Art was in common usage, are among the most radically conceived of all of British Pop works. They are characterised by a daunting simplicity and directness in their appropriation of existing photographs, glued onto surfaces that mimic ordinary walls and doors painted in flat bright colours with household gloss paint. Their reliance on the ready-made and their elimination of the obvious signs of skilful handiwork is all the more surprising given Blake's ability for meticulous drawing and painting. Each work is presented as a found object, although in fact it is essentially a brilliantly disguised illusion fabricated by the artist himself. The dramatic simplicity and geometric abstraction of these works contribute to their eye-catching impact.
From 1963 Blake was represented by Robert Fraser, which placed him at the centre of swinging London and brought him into contact with leading figures of the art and music world.
In 1967 he designed the record cover for Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, an original purpose-built Beatles record, in typically Blakeian idiom: full of associative references and rich in visual syntax. The marriage of disparate elements to make a convincing whole is a way of visual thinking that has been a consistent characteristic of Blake's art. In some of his work there has been a seemingly simple, single subject. But much of his work mingles fantasy with reality, for Blake is a fan of legend rather than the person - an idea borrowed from the hero or heroine in popular art.
Blake's work has been the subject of many one-man shows in the UK and in America and has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the City Art Gallery, Bristol (1973-74); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Kunstverein, Hamburg; the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Tate, London (1983) and Tate, Liverpool (2008).
Blake became a Royal Academician in 1981, and in 2002 received a knighthood for his services to art.
Blake's work is represented in museums worldwide, including: Baltimore Museum of Art, British Council, London; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection; Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Public collections include
Arts Council of Great Britain, London
Baltimore Museum of Art
Bristol City Art Gallery
British Council, London
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon
Carlisle Museum and Art Gallery
Kingston-upon-Hull Museum
Leeds City Art Gallery
Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna
Museum of Moern Art, New York
Royal College of Art, London
Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Portugal - The Berardo Collection
Tate Gallery, London
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
Wolvershampton Art Gallery
Recent Solo Exhibitions
2009 Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris
2006 Fine Art, Design and Antiques Fair, London
2005 Waddington Galleries, London
2001 National Touring Exhibition
2000 Tate Gallery, Liverpool
1999 Morley Gallery, London
1996-97 National Gallery, London (touring to Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester)
1995 Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris
1993 The Tabernacle Cultural Centre, Machynlleth
1992 Govinda Gallery, Washington D.C.
1990 Waddington Galleries, London; Wetterling Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden
Bibliography
M. LIVINGSTONE, Peter Blake, One Man Show, Lund Humphries, UK, 2009