FEATURES ARCHIVE

As we hear the key turn in the lock, the door opens into the studio of a British icon. We are greeted by the man himself: Sir Peter Blake. A visit to the studio of Blake is to enter into a wonderland of creativity. From the myriad of elephants, to the collection of moths, to his famous alphabets, to the life-size model of Sonny Liston who stares you in the eye as you greedily continue your search upstairs; the effect is the artistic equivalent to a child being let loose in Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Nic McElhatton: I know you enjoy collecting objects, some of which you incorporate into your ‘found art’ works. What do you look for and what inspires you to go out hunting?
Sir Peter Blake: I have various collections which are simply ‘collections’. I collect a category you could call folk art; I collect collages; I collect miniature elephants, hats. At other times it will depend on what I am working on. At the moment I am working on a show at Waddington called Homage: Ten by Fifteen; I am taking ten artists and making five works in homage to each of them. One artist is H.C. Westermann: he did a series of sculptures called the Death Ships so I’m doing a series of sculptures incorporating galleons. It’s very bizarre: you go into a junk shop and instead of looking out for what you were looking for a year ago, suddenly you spot a galleon!

Do you remember what started your passion for collecting?
It was only after, when I went to Gravesend [school]. There was no chance of it happening before then. The circumstances were that I was seven when the Second Word War started; I was evacuated twice and I didn’t really collect. I suppose I collected things like the Scout magazine and comics. There was no opportunity to collect really; there were no such things as badges… The door opened when I went to Gravesend School at the age of 14 and joined the junior art department. Next to the railway station there was a junk yard that was about 10 x 100 ft. There was a Nissen hut with things under cover and at the back there was this overgrown, unexplored territory. The further you went, the more wonderful the things you would find.

You have a fascinating ‘Folk Art’ collection. What would you say the difference is between Folk Art and Found Art?
Found art is an extension of the found object. Found art applies to a series of prints I’m doing where I find a piece of ephemera, scan it and then print it out in ink jet, sometimes quite large. What that’s saying is that something that is really mundane, that has no aesthetic sense, is nothing until I do this process with it. So that could be a cigarette packet or a matchbox or a piece of paper or a badge...

Which is the most treasured object or work of art you own?
It changes but it would include a special little collection within my collection which is a pair of Max Miller’s shoes, a Max Miller walking stick – he was the comedian you know – the boots worn by General Tom Thumb, the American dwarf with Barnum and Bailey, the hat worn by Douglas Fairbanks in the 1922 Robin Hood film; they are probably the most precious objects; then there are books – the book of penny toys; some quite rare books.

If you were marooned on a desert island and you were allowed to take one work of art from any period with you, which piece would you choose and why?
I think because of the circumstances it might well be a particular Brancusi sculpture – it’s a wooden sculpture and I think it may have been a sculpture of a baby but it’s only a fragment, it’s the head from it: it’s a ball of wood with a wedge cut out of it which is probably the baby’s mouth. It’s such a beautiful piece of wood, extraordinary, I love Brancusi anyway, so I think I would take that. I would also take, well I’d love to have Velazquez’ Las Meninas but that’s not very practical. I’ve also done Desert Island Discs – twice – and when asked the first time what luxury item I’d take I asked if could take David Hockney and they said: ‘What? A David Hockney?’ I said: ‘No, the David Hockney.’ I explained that David is a good friend of mine and we have great conversations and I like him very much and they said I couldn’t take him so the second time, well I was quite plump then, and decided it would be very nice to see my stomach muscles once in my life so I took a home gym!

Did you ever consider choosing another career other than art? Or, did you always know that you wanted to be an artist?
Well, I went into art so young that I didn’t think I would get into art; it was pure chance that I got into Gravesend Art School. At the interview for the Technical School they said the Art School is part of the Technical school and that if I wanted to go to the art school I could pop round the corner and take a drawing examination, so I was presented with the opportunity completely out of the blue. I suppose that in applying for a technical school (my dad was an electrician) I probably would have gone towards the building trade, certainly at 14. I didn’t ever really have to think about it because it was given to me very, very young. In fantasy, well The Sunday Times did this article called ‘This Chain of Life’ and asked a doctor to choose what he would have chosen to be if he wasn’t a doctor and he said he would have liked to have been an artist and chose me. When I really had to think about it I ended up saying I wanted to be a professional wrestler, specifically Kendo Nagasaki so they then asked Kendo Nagasaki what he would be and he said he would have liked to have been Richard Branson and Richard Branson… it went on for about 20 people until somebody wanted to be a doctor and the chain was completed.

So Kendo was your favourite. You have his mask don’t you?
Yes I do; it’s another one of my treasured objects and I made a film with him. So, my dream was fulfilled; we made a film for Arena and during that I was dressed in his complete outfit – the Kendo mask and sword; the wrestling hall was set up for that evening’s wrestling and Kendo encouraged me to walk out to the ring on my own and climb in, so I went out from the dressing room and I was suddenly strutting and looking up angrily into the gods with nobody there, so I actually was Kendo. He showed me how to roll along the ropes and block a punch so I became him and the fantasy was achieved.

You were classically trained back in the 1950s. How did that training sit with you and your fellow artists?
At Gravesend I did the last year of the intermediate examination in 1950, which dated back to Victorian times; I learnt wood carving, stone carving, lettering, wood engraving, anatomy, perspective, architecture; my chosen craft was Roman lettering. It was a very broad course, I had a very good education. I wanted to be a painter but the staff at Gravesend advised me that it was a precarious way to make a living and to do the National Diploma Commercial Art course so I did a year of that, tried for the Royal College of Art half way through the course to be a graphic designer, sent one painting and Sir Robin Darwin saw it and they ended up accepting me into the painting school. It was a very odd course of events. You had to do National service so I did two years in the air force and then went to the Royal College at the young age of 21. In much the same way that I suddenly became an artist at Gravesend, I was suddenly on the painting course never having been a painting student. The people around me, the people in the year ahead of me at the RCA were Bridget Riley, Frank Auerbach. In my year there was Leon Kossoff and David Troostwick and a lot of women artists that year, Julia Wolstenholme who married Frank Auerbach. The year below me included Richard Smith, Robin Denny, Bill Green and that generation who continued with British Abstract Expressionism. What is sometimes misunderstood is that people assume I was there with David Hockney. In fact, I was there from ‘53–‘56 and that extraordinary year came in ‘59, so it was 6 years after me and that was Hockney, Kitaj, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Derrick Boshier; that was an amazing extraordinary year, Patrick Caulfield the year after. I am sometimes associated with them but I wasn’t part of that group, though I did meet them and we became friends.

It’s interesting that you had such a formal structure of training and then you had these influential people who are fundamentally questioning art?
Well, we questioned the course. Everybody has to go into the life room for the whole of the first year because you either drew or painted or sculpted from the life model and that was compulsory. No question of that but I think what happened at that point once you were allowed out of the life room, you either went into the still life room, which is very traditional. Or, there was a room called the composition room where you’d go and paint compositions – quite often the picture was prescribed to you. I think we were the generation that just started painting what we wanted to paint. I found a little corner, which you didn’t do, and I made myself a studio. I think I put a Victorian settee into it and a palm tree and made myself a little nest. The teachers let it happen but it happened very quickly after that. I wasn’t the first I imagine but it now is very much the norm that you have your own space whereas before you worked in an open space; you had no walls and I made a wall. I painted children reading comics; they were kind of autobiographical and they became the first pictures in my branch of pop art.

It has been suggested that you were the first artist, before Andy Warhol, to put a celebrity into a picture in the mid 1950s. Had that ever been done before?
Perhaps not. It was because my works were autobiographical. I suppose I was saying that this is a person that I like, this is about my life so things like the Locker I have upstairs, is covered with pictures of Brigitte Bardot and Kim Novak so I think that was a breakthrough, using a piece of furniture, an actual locker and calling it art and covering it with an explanation of who I like. Maybe in terms of dates I did precede Warhol but I’ve never particularly claimed that. I tried not to be influenced by Warhol but assumed I probably had been. I accept though that I was very much influenced by Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in some of those early pop pictures. I mean the idea of an area of painting and then a strip of information at the top came directly from Jaspers work but it is interesting to think that maybe Warhol did know what I was doing…

You have many friends in the pop music industry and you’ve done many album covers for various artists. How influential has music been to your work and which artists do you listen to today?
I think the cross over has been very influential. The fact that I met The Who in ‘64 and they became friends; The Beatles; Mick Jagger – he lived 50 yards away from me in Dartford, so I’ve always had these links. That has been very important. In the last week I’ve played some Chet Baker, Mark Murphy, Talking Heads, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dionne Warwick, so it’s pretty broad, lots of modern jazz.

You’ve received numerous awards, honours and commissions in your career. What’s next?
There are a whole lot of books coming out. For years I declined to have a book done; I felt that a book was like a biography and it wasn’t over yet, it was too early, too early to sum it up. It’s only recently that I’ve changed my mind. I have done this book called One Man Show and suddenly Douglas Wilson is doing a book on alphabets - a history of alphabets, including my alphabets. I am featuring in a nice little design series that Brian Webb edits. I recently designed the carpets in the Supreme Court, I worked on some fabrics for Stella McCartney; I did a limited edition Levis design in Japan; and I’ve done some collages in Korea. I did a collage for Chelsea Football Club, for Adidas which they photographed the players against. I’ve always been a football fan but not a Chelsea one but suddenly I was getting tickets each week, so I’ve seen this extraordinary end to the season; I’m still doing music stuff – I recently did an album cover for The Blockheads…

Peter Blake at Christie’s: 60 Years of Printmaking
A celebration of Blake’s printmaking achievements, this comprehensive retrospective spans works from 1950 to the present day. For the first time works from all of his main print publishers: Kip Gresham, Waddington Graphics, Alan Cristea, Coriander Studio, Paul Stolper and CCA Galleries will be on display together at Christie’s South Kensington from 23 July to 12 August. All the works exhibited can be purchased directly via CCA Galleries or Paul Stolper at the exhibition, or via their websites, www.ccagalleries.com and www.paulstolper.com.