Peter Blake was born in Dartford, Kent in 1932 and went to art school at Gravesend Technical College. Leaving at the age of 15, he did national service and then trained at the Royal College of Art. His early works were critical to the definition of British pop art. In 1967, famously, he designed the cover for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In his varied career since, he has 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 be showing what is effectively your first solo sculpture show at the age of 91?
About 10 years ago, I was making a lot of very diverse work – painting, drawing, collages, sculpture. And I realised a lot of it would never be seen, that I was unlikely to have a third retrospective. So I decided to mount a series of shows with [the gallery] Waddington Custot. The first was portraits and people, the second drawing. This is the sculpture element of that concept. There are also three series of collages that I’ve made in the last two years. I still sit with a pair of scissors.
You’re a famous collector. Are you still collecting?
Almost everything in the show is found in one way or another, then I put it together to tell a story. The actual collecting bug I’ve had to put to one side, because my big studio in Hammersmith is full up. But I’m still collecting for work. Once I start making a piece – an Elvis shrine for example – I’m looking for stuff.
Do you think that the public view of you has changed?
Oh, enormously. As with anyone’s career, you have an exhibition and one critic likes it, and four critics don’t. Then you do some more and somebody’s nasty to you. It’s been a rollercoaster. The fact that I’m still here is an enormous factor. People take me more seriously within the art world.
Why weren’t you taken seriously?
That’s quite complicated. I have elements that sit uncomfortably within the painting world. The things like humour and sentimentality in my work, which were slightly sneered at, are now reassessed. I find that a lot of people like what I’ve done.
Though you’re always described as a pop artist, you’ve always stood outside what is current…
The potted history of pop art is that in America, you got Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in the early 50s, then the second wave with Warhol and Lichtenstein, and in England, at more or less the same time, you had the Independent Group, who were a debating group about popular culture. I went to some of the meetings but was never a member.
My contention is that the actual phrase was invented at a dinner party when I was talking to the critic Lawrence Alloway. I explained that I was trying to make an art that was the equivalent of pop music. And Lawrence said: “What? A kind of pop art?” Other people would tell you a different story, but that certainly happened, and I think it was the first use of the phrase.
Why did you want to make that kind of art?
I hoped that a different kind of people would look at art. I hoped the young fan of Elvis might look at my pictures in the same spirit.
What role did creating the Sgt Pepper cover for the Beatles in 1967 play in that?
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 20 album covers and in my mind it’s only one of those. The one that’s 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 when I can. I’ve had quite a lot of illness in the last two years when I couldn’t work, but most days I work five or six hours, though I now work at home, not at the studio.
What inspires you to go on creating?
I love doing it. In a way my career as such is complete. I’ve achieved some things I wanted to achieve. I was very happy to get a knighthood. I’ve always been a great royalist. Now, I complete a body of work and then think, what should I do next? At the moment I’m illustrating the Molly Bloom section of James Joyce’s Ulysses. In the last three days, I started two new paintings and I’ve begun a series of tiny images illustrating The Great Gatsby. They won’t get finished; the Ulysses might, depending on time.
When you look back down the decades, is there one that stands out for you?
If you laid out all the work, there would be strong bits and weaker bits. I’m not going to say: “Oh, the swinging 60s was fantastic, that was my best decade.” It wasn’t. I wasn’t really a swinger. I never did any drugs at all. For me the 1950s were national service and the Royal College, then there are those early pictures that became pop art, then in the 1970s I lived in Somerset and the pictures became idyllic. I came back to London in the 1980s. Each 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 that point I didn’t really understand what it could do. Hockney used it and used it brilliantly. I still can’t work a computer, but I work with somebody which is brilliant. I’ve just done the cover for Mark Knopfler’s rerecording of Going Home to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust with the top 40 guitarists in the world. I got the images and worked with someone who cut them out and then I put them together.
You always seem a happy person. Are you?
Basically, my work is optimistic. People have different reasons to paint. Some people are very political. And some become macabre. My life is happy in the way that you would say Gustav Klimt was happy.
What do you do when you’re not working?
I read quite a bit. I watch television a lot. I rather like Monday nights, which is a kind of quiz night, University Challenge and so on. Chrissy and I used to go out a lot to eat or to clubs and things like that. But that’s curtailed because I’m in a wheelchair – my knees have deteriorated.
Do you have a secret to your longevity?
Chrissy is my secret. She looks after me so well. She is the magic.
Peter Blake, Sculpture and Other Matters is at Waddington Custot, London W1, until April 13
