Sir peter thomas blake biography of rory

Peter Blake (artist)

English artist (born )

For other people with the similar name, see Peter Blake (disambiguation).

Sir

Peter Blake

CBE RDI RA

Blake in

Born

Peter Thomas Blake


() 25 June (age&#;92)

Dartford, Kent, England

EducationRoyal College of Art
Known&#;forPainting, printmaking, collage
Notable workSelf-Portrait with Badges,
MovementPop art
Spouses

  • Jann Haworth

    &#;

    &#;

    (m.&#;; div.&#;)&#;

  • Chrissy Wilson

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    (m.&#;)&#;
Children3

Sir Peter Thomas BlakeCBE RDI RA (born 25 June ) is an English pop artist.

He co-created the sleeve design for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. His other works include the covers for two of The Who's albums, the cover of the Band Aid single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and the Live Aid concert poster.[1] Blake also planned the Brit Award statuette.[2]

Blake is a prominent figure in the pop art movement.[1] Central to his paintings are his interest in images from popular tradition which have infused his collages.

In he was knighted at Buckingham Palace for his services to art.[1]

Early life

Peter Blake was born in Dartford, Kent, on 25 June He was educated at the Gravesend Technical College school of art, and the Royal College of Art.[3]

Career

From the late s, Blake's paintings included imagery from advertisements, music hall entertainment, and wrestlers, often including collaged elements.

After a period of national service in the Royal Air Force, Blake attended the Royal College of Art, and upon graduating in won the Leverhulme Research Award to study popular art; this allowed him to travel and review folk art in countries such as Belgium, France, Italy and Spain: his grand tour. It was around the period of his return to the UK that Blake's style evolved from the classical naturalistic oil paintings of his early period to the collages containing images of movie stars, musicians and pin-up girls that we most readily associate him with. Nevertheless, Blake also retains the naturalistic strain of his practice and has continued to work in oil on canvas throughout his career. During the s and 70s Blake taught at various institutions such as Central St.

Blake was included in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In the "Young Contemporaries" exhibition of in which he exhibited alongside David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj, he was first identified with the emerging British Pop Art movement.

Blake won the () John Moores junior award for Self Portrait with Badges. He came to wider public attention when, along with Pauline Boty, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips, he featured in Ken Russell's Monitor motion picture on pop art, Pop Goes the Easel, broadcast on BBC television in From , Blake was represented by Robert Fraser placing him at the centre of Swinging London and bringing him into contact with head figures of popular culture.

Blake had his first solo exhibition with Robert Fraser Gallery in and appeared on the front cover of LIFE International in a photograph by Lord Snowdon.[4] Blake was given the ultimate exhibition held at Robert Fraser Gallery which closed in The same year, Blake had his first exhibition with Waddington Galleries, owned by Leslie Waddington who became his lifelong supporter and representative.[5] In , Blake painted Leslie Waddington with Portrait of a Young Man by Hans Memling.[6]

Blake participated in Prince Edward's charity television special The Grand Knockout Tournament in

Work

On the Balcony (–) is a significant early work which remains an iconic piece of British Pop Art, showing Blake's interest in combining images from pop identity with fine art.

The perform, which appears to be a collage but is wholly painted, shows, among other things, a boy on the left of the composition holding Édouard Manet's The Balcony, badges and magazines. It was inspired by a painting by Honoré Sharrer depicting workers holding famous paintings, Workers and Paintings.[7] At the "Pop Art in Changing Britain" exhibit and as reported by The Telegraph on 21 February , his Girls with Their Hero, a painting of facets of Elvis Presley was said to have "fashioned a highly personal form of Pop Art, infused by nostalgia for Victoriana and a long-lost world of native pastimes".

Blake has referred to the work of other artists many times. His Captain Webb Matchbox, based on a Bryant & May matchbox design featuring the first man to splash the Channel unaided, is another of his early works in the pop art movement.[1] Another example, The First Real Target () a standard archery aim with the title written across the top is a engage on paintings of targets by Kenneth Noland and Jasper Johns.

Blake has been commissioned to create many album sleeves. He designed the sleeve for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with his wife Jann Haworth, the American-born artist whom he married in and divorced in The Sgt.

Pepper's sleeve has become an iconic work of pop art, much imitated and Blake's best-known work. Producing the collage necessitated the construction of a set with cut-out photographs and objects, such as flowers, centred on a drum (sold in auction in ) with the title of the album.

Blake has subsequently complained about the one-off fee he received for the design (£[8][9]), with no subsequent royalties. Blake made sleeves for the Band Aid single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (), Paul Weller's Stanley Road () and the Ian Dury tribute album Brand Modern Boots and Panties (; Blake was Dury's tutor at Walthamstow School of Art in the early 60s).

He designed the sleeves for Pentangle's Sweet Child, The Who's Face Dances (), which features portraits of the band by a number of artists, and 38 years later, The Who's WHO ().

In , commissioned by Dodo Editions, Blake made Babe Rainbow, a screen-print on tinplate, in an edition of 10,, which sold for £1 each.[10][11][12][13][14]

In , Blake left London to live close Bath.

His work changed command to feature scenes based on English Folklore and characters from Shakespeare. In the early s, he made a set of watercolour paintings to illustrate Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass using a young artist, Celia Wanless, as the model for Alice and in he was a founder of the Brotherhood of Ruralists.

Blake moved back to London in and his function returned to earlier popular identity references.

In and , Blake painted the artwork to Eric Clapton's million-selling live album24 Nights. A scrapbook featuring all of Blake's drawing was later released.

In January , Blake appeared on BBC2's acclaimed ArenaMasters of the Canvas documentary and painted the portrait of the wrestler Kendo Nagasaki.[15]

In June , as The Who returned to perform Leeds University 36 years after recording their seminal Live at Leeds album in , Blake unveiled a Live at Leeds 2 artwork to commemorate the event.

The artist and The Who's Pete Townshend signed an edition which will join the gallery's collection. More recently, Blake has created artist's editions for the opening of the Pallant House Gallery which houses collections of his most famous paintings.

The works are homages to his earlier work on the Stanley Road album cover and Babe Rainbow prints.

Sir Peter Thomas Blake CBE RDI RA (born 25 June ) is an English pop artist. He co-created the sleeve design for the Beatles ' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. His other works include the covers for two of The Who 's albums, the cover of the Band Aid solo "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and the Live Aid concert poster. [1].

He designed a series of deck chairs.

In , Blake designed the cover for Oasis greatest hits album Stop the Clocks. According to Blake, he chose all of the objects in the picture at random, but the sleeves of Sgt.

Pepper's and Definitely Maybe were in the help of his mind. He claims, "It's using the mystery of Definitely Maybe and running away with it." Familiar cultural icons which can be seen on the cover include Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, Michael Caine (replacing the original image of Marilyn Monroe, which could not be used for legal reasons) and the seven dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Blake revealed that the final cover wasn't the authentic which featured an image of the shop 'Granny Takes a Trip' on the Kings Street in Chelsea, London.

Blake created an updated version of Sgt. Pepper—with famous figures from Liverpool history—for the campaign for Liverpool to become European Capital of Culture in , and created a series of prints to celebrate Liverpool's status.[16] In , Blake painted a pig for the public art event King Bladud's Pigs in Bath in the city of Bath.[17]

A fan of Chelsea Football Club, Blake designed a collage to promote the team's home kit in He also designed a shopping bag for the Lucky Identity Jeans company for the holiday season.

As part of 'The Big Egg Hunt' February Sir Peter Blake designed an egg on behalf of Dorchester Collection. Blake created the carpet which runs through the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom's Middlesex Guildhall building.[18]

As he approached his 80th birthday, Blake undertook a project to recreate the Sgt.

Pepper album cover with images of British cultural icons of his life that he most admires.[19] He stated: "I had a very long list of people who I wanted to go in but couldn't fit everyone in – I consider that shows how strong British culture and its legacy of the last six decades is."[19][20] The new version was created for a special birthday celebration of Blake's life at fashion designer Wayne Hemingway's Vintage festival at Boughton House, Northamptonshire in July [19]

An exhibition was held at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to celebrate the artist's long associations with music called Peter Blake and Pop Music (23 June to 7 October ).[21] In , he exhibited his illustrations inspired by Under Milk Wood at National Museum Cardiff.[22] In , Blake crafted the artwork for Eric Clapton's studio album I Still Do.

In March , Blake's poster London Stands Together was distributed in every copy of London's Evening Standard newspaper.[23]

Honours

Blake became a Royal Academician in He was appointed Commander of the Direct of the British Empire in the Birthday Honours and Knight Bachelor in the Birthday Honours for his services to art.[24][25] Blake was knighted by Prince Charles in an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace.[1] Retrospectives of Blake's work were held at the Tate in and Tate Liverpool in [26] In February , the Sir Peter Blake Music Art Gallery, located in the School of Music, University of Leeds, was opened by the artist.

The permanent exhibition features 20 examples of Blake's album sleeve art, including the only public showing of a signed print of his Sgt. Pepper's artwork.

In March , Blake was awarded an honorary DMus from the University of Leeds, and marked by the public unveiling of his artwork for the Boogie For Stu album.

On 18 July , Blake was awarded an honorary degree for Doctor of Art from Nottingham Trent University.

Sir Peter Thomas Blake is one of the most prolific and well-recognized Pop artists since the mids and has created some of the most iconic images and paintings are known to the art movement. Pop art emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States as a movement that questioned the concept of what fine art was and included the integration of mass and popular tradition for various reasons, the main being to express irony. Peter Blake is a famous English-born pop artist who is considered a major pioneer in the pop art movement of the United Kingdom since the middle to the late s. Furthermore, Peter Blake also possesses a dynamic repertoire of awards and honors with the top highlights including the artist being knighted by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace in for his contributions to art and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In he was made an honorary academician at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol.

Solo exhibitions

source:[27]

  • Portal Gallery, London
  • Robert Fraser Gallery, London
  • Waddington and Tooth Galleries, London
  • Tate Gallery, London
  • Watermans Art Centre, Brentford and Turnpike Gallery, Leigh
  • Now We Are Peter Blake at the National Gallery, The National Gallery, London
  • Peter Blake: About Collage, Tate Liverpool
  • 1 to 10 (Collages, Constructions, Drawings & Sculpture) & The Marcel Duchamp Paintings, Waddington Galleries, London
  • Peter Blake: A Retrospective, Tate Liverpool and Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Spain
  • Peter Blake: A Museum for Myself, Holburne Museum, Bath
  • Llareggub: Peter Blake Illustrates Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, National Museum, Cardiff
  • Peter Blake: Portraits and People, Waddington Custot Galleries, London
  • Peter Blake: A Life in Drawings and Watercolours, Waddington Custot, London
  • Peter Blake: The Artist's Studio, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
  • Peter Blake: Time Traveller, Waddington Custot, London

Personal life

Blake was married to the American-born artist Jann Haworth from to , and they had two daughters together, Liberty and Daisy.[28] In , Blake met fellow artist Chrissy Wilson, they married in , and contain a daughter, Rose.[28][29]

Blake has lived in Chiswick, London, since [3] His "vast" studio there is a former ironmonger's warehouse.[30]

Bibliography

See also

Notes

  1. ^ abcde"Pop art star knighted".

    BBC News. 10 October Retrieved 13 March

  2. ^"Damien Hirst's Brit Award statue unveiled". BBC. 1 December
  3. ^ abNikkah, Royah (20 November ). "Sir Peter Blake: why I chose Pop over pot".

    The Telegraph.

  4. ^"Britain's Leading Artists Photographed by Lord Snowdon". LIFE International.

    Sir Peter Blake (b. , Dartford, Kent) is a British painter, sculptor, draughtsman and printmaker. He is known as one of the leading figures of British Pop art. Peter Blake studied at Gravesend School of Art before being accepted into the Royal College of Art, London, where he studied alongside other key British Pop artists, David Hockney, R.

    1 November

  5. ^Peter Blake: Collage. Thames & Hudson. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  6. ^Livingstone, Marco (). "A Partial Portrait of Leslie Waddington as Art Collector". The Leslie Waddington Collection: Part 1.

    Christie's, London: –

  7. ^"Honoré Sharrer. Workers and Paintings. – MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
  8. ^Barber, Lynn (17 June ). "Blake's progress". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 October Retrieved 6 October
  9. ^Barnes, Anthony (4 February ).

    "Where's Adolf?

    Peter Blake's Art For Sale, Exhibitions & Biography | Ocula ...: Sir Peter Blake CBE RDI RA is a contemporary British artist often referred to as the Godfather of the British Pop Art movement. Alongside David Hockney, Patrick Caulfield and Richard Hamilton, Blake sourced imagery from popular culture to create graphic works which define the era.

    The mystery of Sgt Pepper is solved". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 25 May Retrieved 25 April

  10. ^Blake, Peter (). "Babe Rainbow". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 5 September
  11. ^Glaser, Shirley (15 December ).

    "IN SEARCH OF PRINTS CHARMING". New York Magazine. New York Media, LLC. Retrieved 5 September

  12. ^"After 'Sgt. Pepper's': A gallery of Peter Blake's pop art album covers". DangerousMinds. 25 October Retrieved 5 September
  13. ^"Peter Blake: Pop artist stages retrospective".

    the Guardian. 2 August Retrieved 5 September

  14. ^
  15. ^"Masters Of The Canvas". . Retrieved 24 January
  16. ^Mike Chapple, "Pop art pioneer marks ", Liverpool Daily Post, 26/5/06, p3
  17. ^King Bladud's Pigs in Bath
  18. ^"BBC NEWS – In Pictures – In pictures: UK Supreme Court".

    15 July

  19. ^ abcDavies, Caroline (5 October ). "New faces on Sgt Pepper album cover for artist Peter Blake's 80th birthday". The Guardian.
  20. ^"Sir Peter Blake's new Beatles' Sgt Pepper's album cover (with video interview)".

    Alongside David Hockney, Patrick Caulfield and Richard Hamilton, Blake sourced imagery from popular identity to create graphic works which define the era. In the 60s and 70s he went on to become a lecturer at Central St Martins and the Royal College, he travelled extensively and exhibited domestically and internationally. In Peter Blake was awarded the title of The Commander of the Most Terrific order of the British Empire for his services to british visual arts and in was awarded a knighthood. Blake's prolific works have sealed his reputation as one of the most important artists of the 20th Century.

    BBC News Online. 2 April Retrieved 2 April

  21. ^"Peter Blake: Pop Music". Archived from the original on 6 April Retrieved 29 May
  22. ^"Llareggub: Peter Blake illustrates Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood".

    Retrieved 1 June

  23. ^Dex, Robert (26 March ). "Sir Peter Blake's rainbow is a 'symbol of hope' for the capital during the coronavirus outbreak". The Evening Standard.
  24. ^"No. ". The London Gazette (Supplement).

    Peter Blake's early work is ruled by two major subjects: fantastic scenes from the world of the circus and naturalistic paintings with autobiographic elements. The imitation of the popular image society of event posters, which Blake combined with portraits, was usual of his work. Circus characters and children reading comic books are among the artist's usual motifs. In style and content both types of pictures paved the way for English Pop Art.

    10 June p.&#;7.

  25. ^"No. ". The London Gazette (Supplement). 15 June p.&#;1.
  26. ^Publicity for Tate Liverpool retrospectiveArchived 12 March at the Wayback Machine, artatler website
  27. ^Clare, Preston ().

    Peter Blake Collage. Thames & Hudson. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.

  28. ^ abHiggins, Ria (30 May ). "Relative Values: The s artist Sir Peter Blake, and his daughter Rose".

    The Times. Retrieved 30 January

  29. ^"Peter Blake: A retrospective, Biography". Tate. Retrieved 30 January
  30. ^Barber, Lynn (17 June ). "Blake's progress". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 January

References

External links