Peter Blake Quotes
born 1932 England
Sir Peter Thomas Blake (born 25 June 1932) is an English pop artist. His best known work is the image on the cover of The Beatles' album Sgt.
Random Peter Blake quote
13 quotes
People say, "Why do you paint?" and I say, to make magic.
Album covers are like any other vehicle, they are a means of illustrating a story.
He opened the door that so many of us went through, the door of possibility, by saying anything an artist makes is art.
People think Sgt Pepper is part of my name.
Most artists go potty as they get older: dafter and madder as they get more celibate. So I am consciously going to do that.
Ever since, I have fought a vague kind of battle for some kind of fairness.
Sgt Pepper made me more famous but it did not change me as an artist.
In one work Marcel Duchamp meets Tracey Emin in the desert, with three camp cowboys. In another he meets Elvis and the Spice Girls.
Art in Britain is in a very healthy state. The artists of my generation and older are at their best — people like Howard Hodgkin and Frank Auerbach. The YBAs are still very strong, and it's exciting to wonder what the next generation will bring.
I believe in fairies. Although I can't prove they exist, nobody has ever managed to prove to me that they don't.
Brian Sewell is a fool. For some years he seemed to have it in for me and Hockney and [R.B.] Kitaj. Even if he wasn't writing about us he'd always find a way of bringing us in. He'd say, "so and so was a bad artist but not as bad as Hockney, Kitaj or Blake." Things like that.
My dealer was a friend of the Beatles and the Stones, and he suggested they used a fine artist. I talked to the Beatles at length about what the cover would be. I worked out it would show the moment after they had played in a bandstand in the park. My big contribution was the life-size cutouts, the magic crowds."
I don't think artists should be sponsored. You should not rely on grants. You either make a success of your art or you don’t. I worked as an artist for a number of years without making much money – I have never had any financial backing in that way. Things are now very good for me but for a lot of the time things were not.