Damien Hirst visits Peter Blake’s studio | HENI Talks

[Music] so that's the elephant about last week you couldn't not get it could you hide you know so that's the other food collection so did you go out and see this odd you buy it from a book it was it was in the auction in the room the week before and I didn't go and he didn't sell and he came up the next week and I thought that's fate and they ought to get it looks like it's always been here as well it does doesn't it only came in last week Sookie and that's all the only food collection and that's the Hat collection and those oh yes I heard the Everly Brothers we do know these from Mexico all right mate then the clicks ooh I sorry did you see there was a photograph on the internet were and David Hockney's wearing one of these oh no the superimposing the chordates of David Hockney honey and then these are some more of the boat sculptures this is a Cowboys versus Indians so it's two ships where'd you get these ships the so I got them slowly and then there was the most incredible auction at this auction room where they had about 15 and I want 10 that day I ran well supplied they round the corner it's some pirates what's this one that's the this is just wood wooden Bay's attacking a butcher Wow they love that one this is the newest ship this is the military shooting down Disney Princesses and then this is the sculpture studio Wow the light in here is great though it's fantastic isn't it amazing so do it so this is very much a working space yes oh this is oh oh this this is a Robin Hood one yeah this is Robin Hood attacking goofy so if you got are you working on many many things all the same time yeah this Michael Fraser comes here once every six weeks and he sticks them down so I get them ready all right then we'll stick them down yes I'm working on all kinds of projects so what made you go to outscore you're making things before no it was pure chance and I I was evacuated and then got a place to the graves in tech where I would have done something in the kind of line of building because my family were electricians and and at the interview they said the art school is part of the take if you want to go to art school and pop around the corner do a drawing test and you can go to art school so at the age of 13 I really thought yeah yeah so I went to junior art department at 13 amazing and did you like do you draw before that lots no nothing nothing during the wall well hey you think so so it really was kind of childhood and then suddenly art school and crazy school about drawing Quentin Chris amazing from one day it was a model he was a model that grows in this this was a man and I was having a flat decorated in in the early sixties and the the man said my neighbor is an artist would you like to see his work so his name was Ted Wilcox and his story was that he'd been a rear gunner in the RAF being shot down and injured and recuperation they taught him how to to undo these embroideries and he did a picture of the Queen then he did a picture of a ballet dancer and then he went into these crazy pinup girls brilliant on the amazing apperance so he'd invent the background he rewrote Alice in Wonderland in his own language using some kind of symbolism that's it on the left there oh and I commissioned him to do a set of illustrations to our lists and and the signs of the zodiac and where is he now oh he died some years ago and so there's a large body of work or it's no III bought most of it I mean as he did he sat in this little slum of amazing a lot of drank beer smoke popped out to put his bets on and then did these amazing the black lines great around the fingers you'd make up the tattooing yeah I love Joey's chairs Liam Mike you raised them of all these that's hoped going crazy great though so these are all collages you Eduardo I'd Oliver I'd rather I was some really sweet to me no he's a lovely man yeah horrible how he died yeah that's raising the yeah there's a great thing that um an artist called my advisement from the 80s said that collage was the greatest idea of the 21st century it's amazing transcending that yeah he loved he loved nineteenth-century dancers so that's um that's with various dances and that that's through the Opera House in Paris this one he finds a stall in the Waterloo plane in Amsterdam where I went as a student and bought great stuff and it's all the stuff he uses he says the dream stole you the dream about you wake up and you haven't been there so it said you're the clock faces the marbles the eggs the stamps amazing yeah and then because I only had that I've covered his leg area with the flags yeah this one is so much work you progressed as a month but there's all these become friends are these no I don't want them to I want to just do them and I don't have a show for them well that's a wedding at Hasty's so you've got you got the wedding going on there and then you got Princeton Dylan Thomas's at the wedding and Rita Hayworth I can't believe they were letting out you must do I said I sit in the evenings and do the cutting you know I mean you've got calluses no a little bit of soulless tears sometimes oh this is from the sergeant pepper's that's from Sergeant Pepper I recognized that yeah yes he's wearing out but he's wonderful and yeah I like the way is wearing out as well and that's the Alice in Wonderland as our commission from tade Wow all kinds of new new things in that you like the treacle Wellman as mustard mine and this base was the sculpture I'm a cool sculpture park that I showed in 84 that the tape and at the time it was about all this you it was a road yeah in the park and then a street at the other end and then various sculptures so that that's Joseph boys with the Coyotes but his arms bitten off because I had a little run-in with him once yep it was something to do with a floor piece that I this should have walked on and didn't or shouldn't indeed what a piece of his was a piece of his work that I walked across all right yeah and he shouted only no yeah Duffy's okay and then this final finally that that's wait that's sitting waiting for me to do my ode to bug as a reminder the wallpaper was old screens that are both in the 60s and if they were damaged you they were very cheap and and I used them down in Somerset and luckily they're on canvas so I could bring them up here and put them there amaze another debutante they and is that done the same way you do the collages Carl yeah the Victor you could buy you could buy the images jackets and make people did lots of scrapbook using them and then occasionally made screens I've got about five really good screens I love that without mix I think that's where I got my idea for the butterfly paintings I was it there was it was a part of Victorian tea tray where they'd made like a butterfly hardly wait yeah yeah yeah I mean a lot of my ideas come from Victorian ideas I've been banned by Chris you from doing any more butterflies eat you I mean it they were in homage to you but you felt the eventually no no I wouldn't do that but eventually she felt I was milking a bit yeah you can't get copyright on mussels on no so as long as you don't mind now all my ideas are stolen right well that all ideas are fast don't they yeah plus one one to another yeah I mean I'm not beating the spots I'm thinking when you are stolen from Larry palms or someone plate yeah nothing's original is it I mean it's what it's what you do with it isn't that yeah and I think when I started at Goldsmiths that was the best thing you and it was when you realize you don't have to be original exactly they used to say don't borrow ideas steal them did they yeah Michael Craig Martin used to say that there are many so when did you come across collages an idea because you did you start painting them and drawing it was very specific paint painting and drawing really started because the Gravesend I did the intermedia and then you had to decide which course you would take whether you do fine art or commercial art and when I was advised to do the commercial art course which I did for a year and then tried for the Royal College for the graphic design department and was accepted for the painting school so until then I'd never been a painting student and then then I had to do two years national service so I arrived at the Royal College still just 18 having done you because it all started very early um and and became a painting student there so you've never done any college at that point no and the colours came at the end of the three years when Dick Smith had a girlfriend called Yasha Reichardt who is uncle and aunt who were friends of Schwitters coach witters and he literally described to me whether whether college was and was he called collaging since a friendship words me probably know a French and we'd sit and mace em bleach I think Ritter's sending me maybe yeah yeah which I'll show you some of dicks there so we'd sit and make these little objects and it's really started from there so 1956 that we're learning so what you mean you have the studio and you make paintings and you make sculptures or collages and they come out of this kind of environment yeah I mean it's happened it's not supposed to be though it's a working studio but then you don't mind it being seen as a thing in its own right it's become that you know I was developed to that so so simply by grouping stuff together eventually I mean up here the it was an open space we just we had to put columns in to support the building because we kept whatever I could with the old building and then I built a wall then I built another wall and suddenly you've got galleries you've got boxes yeah and then and stuff congregated into these various boxes so it's become like a museum something in a way that that's still still pretty private yoga in the early days I would take groups around I don't do that anymore and and I have very few visitors so but I mean it's like you're coming here today it's really interesting to show it to you because I know you collect as well and I know you'll be interested in what's here you because you've got a similar collection but in fact he's a working a private working studio collection stroke addiction addiction yeah and so when you started with the studio was at a very private place because he changed into something you don't mind it was very empty I mean it was an industrial building and when I moved in because because I we bought them that poor Huxley's here and Ben Johnson and report this kind of derelict build his yard and then I got I was asking residents of the National Gallery for the two years I was there this was being restored so I literally moved from the National Gallery you need to hear he was an easel and a couple of pictures into an empty space and then stuff that was in the house there was kind of surplus to the house we moved to here and it slowly evolved and then there's a point in my life I think where it would it isn't appropriate anymore to collect you I've reached I think having shown it the three times I've kind of reached a conclusion with most of the collections so with the elephants for instance it was only seeing that extraordinary elephant last week the mullennix yeah it stops I started I had to have that but but I'm not looking for elephants anymore so it's like clearing the desk and I'm 85 now and you 85 yet so you got to start thinking you're on on the last stretch you so I'm it's a kind of swan song and he's going world a working world but we're gonna do a few more oh yeah there might be a couple more elephants left there might be a few more elephants waiting for me and when people look at the studio other part of the studio tour do you expect them to see more in that than they would in like a collage or a painting people find stuff I mean some people that goes completely over their age and other people might look in the little box that I'd forgotten and say oh you've got a so-and-so so people read it in different ways and what you want people to take from it when they say well I hope I'll be you for example I mean oh I hope you'll put it in your kind of memory bank as a nice day we're two old friends met and I showed you the studio again and we had a nice morning I think there's a really strong sensibility that you have so it's like whenever you know a lot of people could look in here so it's a room for a junk or something but I think it's like yeah I can always tell when it's you doing a collage compared to anyone elses which is very subtle and very delicate much more delicate than a lot of other I mean than anything else I can think of really well those good good you

Channel: HENI Talks

Views: 31,314

Keywords: peter blake, damien hirst, Damien Hirst interview 2018, Damien Hirst interview, Peter Blake artist, Peter Blake interview, Peter Blake studio, Peter Blake studio visit, peter blake pop art, peter blake pop art life, Damien Hirst studio, Damien Hirst Peter Blake, peter blake artist, Damien Hirst 2018, peter blake collections, contemporary art, damien hirst documentary, sir peter blake documentary, peter blake documentary, HENI Talks, peter blake studio visit

Id: bMK0OC9ro20

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 26 2018