Peter Blake was born in Dartford, Kent in 1932 and attended art school at Gravesend Technical College. He left at the age of 15, did national service and then trained at the Royal College of Art. His early works were crucial to the definition of British pop art. In 1967 he famously designed the cover for the Beatles album Sergeant Pepper‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In his varied career he continued to develop an idiosyncratic and iconic style in paintings, collages, drawing and sculpture. He lives in Chiswick with his second wife, the artist Chrissy Wilson, to whom he has been married for 37 years.
How does it feel to show what is essentially your first solo sculpture show at your age? 91?
About 10 years ago I made a lot of very diverse work: painting, drawing, collages, sculpting. And I realized that much of it would never be seen, that it was unlikely that I would have a third retrospective. So I decided to organize a series of shows [the gallery] Waddington Custot. The first were portraits and people, the second drawing. This is the sculpture element of that concept. There are also three series of collages that I have made over the past two years. I’m still stuck with scissors.
You are a famous collector. Are you still collecting?
Almost everything in the show can be found in some way, then I put it together to tell a story. I’ve had to put the actual collecting bug aside because my big studio in Hammersmith is full. But I still collect for work. As soon as I start making a piece – an Elvis shrine, for example – I’m looking for supplies.
Do you think the public’s perception of you has changed?
Oh, huge. Like anyone’s career, you have an exhibition and one critic likes it, and four critics don’t. Then you do something else and someone is mean to you. It was a roller coaster. The fact that I’m still here is a huge factor. Within the art world, people take me more seriously.
My life is happy in the way you would say Gustav Klimt was happy
Why weren’t you taken seriously?
That’s quite complicated. I have elements that sit uncomfortably in the painting world. Things like humor and sentimentality in my work, which were somewhat mocked, are now being reassessed. I notice that many people like what I have done.
Although you have always been described as a pop artist, you have always been outside what is current…
The ingrained history of pop art is that in America in the early 1950s you had Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, then the second wave with Warhol and Lichtenstein, and in England, more or less at the same time, the Independent Group. which were a debate group about popular culture. I went to a few meetings, but was never a member.
My contention is that the actual expression was invented at a dinner party when I was talking to the critic Lawrence Alloway. I explained that I was trying to make art that was the equivalent of pop music. And Lawrence said, “What? Some kind of pop art?” Other people would tell you a different story, but that certainly happened, and I think that was the first use of the phrase.
What made you want to make that kind of art?
I hoped that a different kind of people would look at art. I hoped that the young Elvis fan would look at my photos in the same spirit.
What role did creating the Sergeant Pepper play a cover for the Beatles from 1967 in it?
I always say it’s been a mixed blessing. At that point I was pretty well established. It didn’t make me. I’ve done about twenty album covers and in my mind this is just one of them. The one that is dearest to me is Gettin‘ in Over my head for Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
Do you still work every day?
I work all the time if I can. I’ve been sick quite a lot in the last two years where I haven’t been able to work, but most days I work five or six hours, although now I work from home and not in the studio.
What inspires you to keep creating?
I love doing it. In a sense, my career as such is complete. I have achieved some things that I wanted to achieve. I was very happy to be knighted. I have always been a great royalist. Now I complete a body of work and then think: what should I do now? I am currently illustrating the Molly Bloom section of James Joyce Odysseus. Over the past three days I have started two new paintings and started a series of small images for illustration The Great Gatsby. They won’t be ready; the Odysseus maybe, depending on the time.
When you look back over the past decades, is there one that stands out for you?
If you were to divide all the work, there would be strong parts and weaker parts. I’m not going to say, “Oh, the swinging sixties were great, that was my best decade.” It wasn’t. I wasn’t really a swinger. I’ve never used drugs at all. For me the 1950s were the military service and the Royal College, then there are those early photographs that became pop art, and in the 1970s I was living in Somerset and the photographs became idyllic. I came back to London in the 1980s. Every decade has its own character. I don’t feel nostalgic for a period.
How good are you with technology?
Years ago, David Hockney and I were asked to test one of the first computers. But at the time I didn’t really understand what it could do. Hockney used it and used it brilliantly. I still can’t work on a computer, but I work with someone who is brilliant. I just did the cover for Mark Knopfler’s re-recording of Going Home to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust with the 40 best guitarists in the world. I got the images and worked with someone who cut them out and then put them together.
You always seem like a happy person. Are you?
Basically my work is optimistic. People have different reasons for painting. Some people are very political. And some become macabre. My life is happy in the way you would say Gustav Klimt was happy.
What do you do when you’re not working?
I’ve read quite a bit. I watch a lot of television. I prefer Monday nights, which is kind of like a quiz night. University Challenge and so forth. Chrissy and I often went out to dinner or to clubs and things like that. But that is limited because I am in a wheelchair – my knees have deteriorated.
Do you have a secret to your longevity?
Chrissy is my secret. She takes such good care of me. She is the magic.