Peter Blake

About

From Wikipedia:

Sir Peter Thomas Blake CBE RDI RA (born 25 June 1932) is an English pop artist. He co-created the sleeve design for the Beatles’ 1967 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. Blake also designed the 2012 Brit Award statuette.

Blake is a prominent figure in the pop art movement. Central to his paintings are his interest in images from popular culture which have infused his collages. In 2002 he was knighted at Buckingham Palace for his services to art. […]

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 1963 and divorced in 1979. 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 2008) with the title of the album. Blake has subsequently complained about the one-off fee he received for the design (£200), with no subsequent royalties. Blake made sleeves for the Band Aid single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (1984), Paul Weller’s Stanley Road (1995) and the Ian Dury tribute album Brand New Boots and Panties (2001; 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 (1981), which features portraits of the band by a number of artists, and 38 years later, The Who’s WHO (2019). […]

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I met Paul McCartney in 1963 and in 1964 he asked if he could buy or commission a painting from me. […] He had just got the Mull of Kintyre [property, in 1966] and had bought a painting of Highland cattle in a stream. I said: ‘Let’s do a picture to match that and I’ll draw a nice stag for you.’ The best stag ever is the Landseer painting The Monarch Of The Glen. I did it in acrylic, which is incredibly stupid, because to get all that mistiness in a paint that dries very quickly is very difficult. It would’ve been much easier to do it in oil paint.

Peter Blake – From artnet.com, February 20, 2017

It’s really nice that the friendship and the artistic connection between Paul McCartney and Peter Blake goes through The Monarch Of The Glen. I know Paul McCartney still has the painting. We’d like to be able to get it on loan. We weren’t able to do it in the time that we have at the moment, but we’d like to do that at some point in the future. It would be nice to put them on display together.

Sir John Leighton, NGS’s director-general – From artnet.com, February 20, 2017

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They [Paul McCartney and Robert Fraser] happened to come to the studio one night and were just on a trip, you know, they were seeing things that weren’t there — seeing colours and seeing things that simply weren’t there and persuading me that I had to do it! You know, saying, ‘Look, you’ve got to, you’re not living a full life unless you experience these things.’ I don’t know how I ever insisted on not doing it, because the pressure to participate was enormous, but I just never did, you know. Which I am not particularly proud of. I mean, I am glad I didn’t, but it would have been a great deal easier to. The idea of that amount of responsibility being taken away from you. I never mind getting drunk and I never mind losing that sense, but LSD did frighten me. That was probably a good thing.

Peter Blake – From “Groovy Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Fraser” by Harriet Vyner, 1999

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In 2001, Peter Blake designed the cover of the tribute album to Ian Dury, “Brand New Boots And Panties.” The album featured Paul McCartney on the track “I’m Partial To Your Abracadabra.”

As an art student Ian Dury was taught by Peter Blake and they became firm friends. Ian went on to pursue a career in music, with his band Kilburn and the Highroads (debut album ‘New Boots and Panties’) and then the hugely successful Ian Dury and The Blockheads. Peter Blake and Ian maintained their friendship until Ian’s death in 2000. In memory of Ian, Peter created a portrait that was used on the cover of the 2001 tribute album ‘Brand New Boots and Panties’ which featured Paul McCartney and Robbie Williams amongst others. The photograph by Chris Gabrin used as the front cover for the debut album was featured as the back cover of the tribute album, and the two images were combined to produce this very special limited edition print.

From New Boots And Panties (Limited Edition) by Peter Blake Editioned artwork | Art Collectorz:

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Last updated on February 18, 2024