Peter Blake: Collage

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Cathie Pilkington, keeper of the Royal Academy Schools, said: “Although academic life drawing is no longer a compulsory subject, many of our students use drawing as a central part of their practice.” Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I Other leading artists echoed Blake’s lament, including the sculptor Michael Sandle, a Royal Academician who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1950s. He was “appalled” by the recent experience of a Slade student: “They told her ‘we’re not interested in your drawings.’”

One of Bernar Venet’s iconic Indeterminate Line sculptures, created in rolled steel, shows the French artist’s approach to conceptualising and configuring space. During the 1960s and 70s Blake taught at various institutions such as St. Martins School of Art, Harrow School of Art, Walthamstow School of Art and the Royal College of Art. A founding member of the Brotherhood of Ruralists and a constant inspiration for numerous creatives, Blake was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1981, and a CBE in 1983. The Pop art movement began in England, during the mid-twentieth century and provided a radical shift in how art had been viewed throughout art history. Blending fine art with popular culture, pop artists incorporated images from everyday life, including advertising, images from comic books, newspapers, television, film, and consumer goods. Peter Blake and Pop Art Style

Blake, now 88, told the Observer that he draws “all the time”. He was particularly disappointed that, as professor of drawing at the Royal Academy Schools from 2002 to 2004, he struggled to instil that passion in his students: “They don’t draw. I can’t reignite an interest.”

An avid collector, Blake's collages combine junkyard treasures and found objects with images from popular culture. He revisits themes drawn from his childhood - the entertainments of the circus, the glamour of the cinema and the showmanship of the wrestling ring - weaving detailed, often humorous narratives. From his early paintings depicting assembled fragments of popular imagery, to his found-object constructions and his most recent inkjet print collages, Blake has broadened the scope of what collage can be and communicate. Video still of Sir Peter Blake taken in 2016; The Academy on Vimeo, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons A Museum for Myself by Peter Blake – Published by Holburne Museum to accompany an exhibition held from 14 May to 4 September 2011Cover for the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band designed by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth; Yanghime TADIWODOA BBAEW, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Entering Blake’s studio for the first time is intensely evocative. Collage has always been central to his artworks, from Victoriana to Americana, and this is where he hoards his sources – fermenting folk memories into art. In 1990 and 1991, Blake painted the artwork to Eric Clapton's 1991 million-selling live album 24 Nights. A scrapbook featuring all of Blake's drawing was later released. In January 1992, Blake appeared on BBC2's acclaimed Arena Masters of the Canvas documentary and painted the portrait of the wrestler Kendo Nagasaki. [15] NR: Those first collages are small in scale and abstract in nature, often made by the informal piecing together of torn fragments.Yet the Swinging Sixties was just a short chapter in his long career. He was already in his thirties when The Beatles released their first LP. And unlike a lot of artists of that era, he’s still full of new ideas. In 1992, Blake was featured in the BBC documentary Masters of the Canvas. 10 years later, in 2002, the artist received a knighthood for his services to art. Around his 80th birthday, Blake recreated the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover art using pictures of people he had met throughout his life. He used computer software to produce the art, instead of the plywood pieces that were used to create the original design.

Blake has said, “You simply can’t make art without having that history of art behind you and I think if you asked any artist, they would always say they had learned from previous art. Perhaps I show that more than most in that I often appropriate art and quote from it.” The vast collage artwork shows The Beatles posing with the images of 70 famous people from popular culture. This is Blake’s best-known work. It appealed not only to art lovers, but those who loved Pop music by the Beatles. NR: I have in mind a humorous kind of competition – the battle between collage and painting. Is there a conflict between the two? Founded in 2003 by Frieze magazine, the international art journal, Frieze Art Fair has become an annual highlight of the British art scene (there’s also a parallel Frieze Art Fair in New York).Blake’s studio isn’t like most artists’ studios. It’s more like a museum – a colossal cabinet of curiosities. An obsessive collector of ephemera, everything from vintage toys to taxidermy, his secluded studio is crammed full of surreal and slightly sinister objets d’art. Peter Blake was invited to a dinner, in 1959, held by Lawrence Alloway, and art critic and Independent Group Founder, and member of the Institute of Contemporary Art. Blake shared his creative visions with the group, who were all part of the emerging British Pop art community. Peter Blake and Early Exhibitions Blake's consistent influx of references to current cultural trends remark upon the human experience within a constant stream of outward influences born within a mass media-laden society. Whether wrestlers, musicians, celebrities, works of literature, or nods to prior artworks, he fondly pays homage to the source materials of our modern mythmaking.