This small town symbolized the archetype of pastoral American life. Yet this idyllic place was also held hostage by a dark past, manifesting in the racial tensions that scar much of American history.
•
Peter Blake
Artist
Sir Peter Blake (b. 1932, 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.B. Kitaj, Joe Tilson, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and Derek Boshier. After graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1956, Blake began to appropriate pop culture icons and advertising imagery to create homages to the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Elvis Presley and professional wrestlers. His iconic 1961 Self-portrait with Badges, in the Tate Collection, shows Blake holding an Elvis album, dressed in American jeans, Converse trainers, and baseball badges; here is the artist as a genuine fan. In other works, he composes assemblages of found objects with humorous allusions to art history and childhood fantasies. In 1967 he designed the iconic album cover for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in his distinctive style of collage. Blake continues to be associated with the music world by designing album covers. In 1975 Blake co-founded the Brotherhood of Ruralists, a group of artists who moved to Somerset to paint nature.
After completing his National Service with the R.A.F., he received the Leverhulme Research Award to study popular art and travelled through Europe 1956-7. Blake’s first one-man exhibition was held in 1962 at the Portal Gallery, London; solo shows followed at the Robert Fraser Gallery, London (1965) and at Leslie Waddington Prints, London (1969). His first retrospective exhibition was held as early as 1969 at the City Art Gallery, Bristol. Subsequent retrospectives were held in 1973 at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, touring to Hamburg and Brussels and the Tate Gallery in 1983. In 1994 he was made the Third Associate Artist of the National Gallery, London. Peter Blake was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1981, and was knighted in 2002. In 2007 the Tate Liverpool held a major retrospective of Peter Blake’s work which toured to the Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao, Spain in 2008. In 2010, Lund Humphries published Peter Blake: One Man Show, a comprehensive monograph by Marco Livingstone.
Peter Blake lives and works in London.
•
RELATED ARTICLES
-
In The Next Door RoomPhotography of Lise Sarfati
The awakening of adolescence has been a recurring theme that has always fascinated a great many visual artists; conflicts of identity, physical metamorphosis, psychological instability (more…)
-
So British! Collection PinaultJun 5, 2019 – May 11, 2020
Since its creation 30 years ago, the Pinault collection has grown quickly to become a major presence in the contemporary arts. This exhibition focuses on the British artists present in the collection. Artists include Nigel Cooke, Jonathan Wateridge, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Toby Ziegler, among others.
-
The American Document / Part IIFractured States / Peter van Agtmael
After returning from years of war coverage, Peter van Agtmael tries to piece together the memory, identity, race, class, and family, in a landscape which has become as surreal as the war he left behind.
-
Adorned / The Fashionable ShowDec 12, 2019 – Mar 11, 2020
The exhibition Adorned – The Fashionable Show presents intriguing and challenging fashion related photography projects created by a new generation of visual artists. (more…)
-
Collecting PracticesOct 12, 2019 – Nov 8, 2020
In 2019, the Botín Centre celebrates the 25th anniversary of Itineraries, the annual exhibition that displays the work of the artists awarded the Botín Foundation’s Visual Arts Grant each year, which has been running since 1993.
-
Worlds in MotionSep 21, 2019 – Apr 13, 2020
Mudam Luxembourg presents Worlds in Motion, a thematic presentation of works from the Mudam Collection that embody movement as a physical and perceptual event.
-
Rashid Johnson / Anxious AudienceJanuary 25 – May 10, 2020
American artist Rashid Johnson stages a major new site-specific commission at The Power Plant. Ricocheting between the opposing walls of this narrow passage, these works are a continuation of Johnson’s series known as Anxious Audiences.
-
ARTPIL / Prescription .107Look back on 2019
We are at the year’s end, 2019. There is not a singularity of form which could define the past twelve months, or any epoch. This year, we have had our part of crisis and tension, distorted visions, along with struggles in identity, politics, and culture.
