Peter Blake: Collage

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A key figure in pop art, Blake has reached acclaim for his paintings, collages and prints, including the sleeve design for the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heats Club Band, alongside cover for The Who, Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas, and also the 2012 Brit Award statuette. Within Peter Blake: Collage, the artist’s work is brought to the fore and is accompanied with colourful imagery that seeks to document his influential contribution to the medium. Born in Dartford, Kent in 1932 Blake studied initially at Gravesend Technical College from 1949-51. After a period of national service in the Royal Air Force, Blake attended the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1956. Together with six other painters who had made similar transitions to the British countryside, Blake formed the “Brotherhood of Ruralists”—an artistic group whose stated aims were, as he wrote in 1978, “to paint about love, beauty, joy, sentiment, and magic.” Blake’s Pop art had never been as cynical as American artists like Warhol, but during this period he embraced a unabashedly joyous and idyllic worldview at odds with the then-current modes of artistic production. To see how Peter Blake’s Pop Art style compares to other Pop Art styles, see our article on the Characteristics of Pop Art. Peter Blake Art Teacher Peter Blake admired the work of American artist Jasper John’s “Target Paintings.” In The First Real Target (1961), Blake creates his own target, by using a real archery target. While Johns chose to paint his targets on canvas, with visual brushstrokes, Blake had fun in this British Pop art artwork, by first purchasing a real archery target.

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 2012). [21] In 2014, he exhibited his illustrations inspired by Under Milk Wood at National Museum Cardiff. [22] In 2016, Blake designed the artwork for Eric Clapton's studio album I Still Do.While other Pop artists frequently used images of women in their work, they often did so with a tongue in cheek or overtly sexualized bent. In Blake's piece, we find a refreshing breath of innocence that brings to mind the semi-awkward wonder in burgeoning lust.

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. Blake even provides Cornell with his own bright-yellow tour bus, sending him on what might be called – if Beatles references are allowed – a magical mystery tour. It’s a most enjoyable ride.Dex, Robert (26 March 2020). "Sir Peter Blake's rainbow is a 'symbol of hope' for the capital during the coronavirus outbreak". The Evening Standard. I started the drawing school because there was nowhere in London for serious young emerging artists to draw from life.” Peter Blake (1932-) is an English artist and one of the founders of British Pop art and the Pop art movement.