Peter Blake

Sir Peter Thomas Blake (born 25 June 1932) is an English pop artist. His best known work is the image on the cover of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He has since complained he was only paid £200 for this. He used images from comics, magizines, consumers goods, and other images to create colorful paintings.

Peter Blake, 2016

Sourced

Sgt. Pepper's cover

• Ever since, I have fought a vague kind of battle for some kind of fairness.
  • Cited in Charlotte Higgins, "It was 37 years ago today – and Sgt Pepper cover has still failed to pay", The Guardian, 2004-06-03

• My dealer was a friend of the Beatles and the Stones, and he suggested they used a fine artist. I talked to the Beatles at length about what the cover would be. I worked out it would show the moment after they had played in a bandstand in the park. My big contribution was the life-size cutouts, the magic crowds."
  • Cited in Charlotte Higgins, "It was 37 years ago today – and Sgt Pepper cover has still failed to pay", The Guardian, 2004-06-03

• Album covers are like any other vehicle, they are a means of illustrating a story.
  • Ian Herbert North, "We hope you will enjoy the show", The Independent, 2005-02-11

• People think Sgt Pepper is part of my name.
  • Serena Davies, "In the studio:Peter Blake, The Daily Telegraph, 2005-12-13

• Sgt Pepper made me more famous but it did not change me as an artist.
  • Colin Serjent, "Blake's 08, Nerve, Autumn 2006

Art

• In one work Marcel Duchamp meets Tracey Emin in the desert, with three camp cowboys. In another he meets Elvis and the Spice Girls.
  • Cited in Charlotte Higgins, "It was 37 years ago today – and Sgt Pepper cover has still failed to pay", The Guardian, 2004-06-03
  • On his painting, Marcel Duchamp's World Tour.

• Art in Britain is in a very healthy state. The artists of my generation and older are at their best — people like Howard Hodgkin and Frank Auerbach. The YBAs are still very strong, and it's exciting to wonder what the next generation will bring.
  • Simon O'Hagan "Credo:Peter Blake", The Independent on Sunday, 2005-11-20. Accessed from findarticles.com, 2007-01-22

• He opened the door that so many of us went through, the door of possibility, by saying anything an artist makes is art.
  • Serena Davies, "In the studio:Peter Blake, The Daily Telegraph, 2005-12-13
  • On Marcel Duchamp.

• People say, "Why do you paint?" and I say, to make magic.
  • Serena Davies, "In the studio:Peter Blake, The Daily Telegraph, 2005-12-13

• I can’t work with computers but I work with someone who can. We talk about what the subjects will be and then I get a load of images about Liverpool. We then scan them and put them on a disk and then we manipulate them on the computer. I am treating them as posters. They are prints but I want them to look like posters.
  • Colin Serjent, "Blake's 08, Nerve, Autumn 2006
  • On producing serigraph prints to celebrate Liverpool as the 2008 European Capital of Culture.

Life

• Most artists go potty as they get older: dafter and madder as they get more celibate. So I am consciously going to do that.
  • Cited in Charlotte Higgins, "It was 37 years ago today – and Sgt Pepper cover has still failed to pay", The Guardian (3 June 2004).

• I believe in fairies. Although I can't prove they exist, nobody has ever managed to prove to me that they don't.
• Brian Sewell is a fool. For some years he seemed to have it in for me and Hockney and [R.B.] Kitaj. Even if he wasn't writing about us he'd always find a way of bringing us in. He'd say, "so and so was a bad artist but not as bad as Hockney, Kitaj or Blake." Things like that.
  • Simon O'Hagan "Credo: Peter Blake", The Independent on Sunday (20 November 2005), accessed from findarticles.com (22 January 2007).

• I say to people I'm in my late period. Obviously, as you get older you're in your late period anyway, but to decide you are becomes a concept. It's related to the concept of my retirement, which was about the fact that I'd shown at the greatest gallery in the world and I'd never top that... So, I retired from the jealousy of other artists, and ambition. I could alternatively have become a Buddhist or something — it is a kind of beatific state.
  • Serena Davies, "In the studio:Peter Blake, The Daily Telegraph (13 December 2005).
  • The "greatest gallery" refers to the National Gallery in London, where he was the associate artist in 1996.

• I don't think artists should be sponsored. You should not rely on grants. You either make a success of your art or you don’t. I worked as an artist for a number of years without making much money – I have never had any financial backing in that way. Things are now very good for me but for a lot of the time things were not.
  • Colin Serjent, "Blake's 08, Nerve (Autumn 2006).