Peter Blake

V is for Valentine

Peter Blake A Walk in the Tuileries Gardens, 2004 26 colour Screenprint with Silver leaf and 3 Glazes Hand signed and numbered 28/200 by artist on lower front 30 1/5 × 22 1/2 inches The work is matted on board and unframed as it had been removed from its original frame. Measurements: Board: 30 1/8 x 22 1/2 inches Sheet: 24 x 20 inches Unframed A Walk Through the Tuileries Gardens is based on a memory of a stroll in Paris distilled through the ephemera he found along the way. ' The legendary Peter Blake, the father of British Pop Art, is renowned for his love of gathering and collecting the ephemera of life, of memories, of dreams and whimsies, sometimes mingled with those of other historical fantasists. Possessions he regards as symbolic of his relationships with his world, carefully questioning the personal significance of each object in this respect. The scraps of tickets, fragments of plastic, driftwood, pebbles and sycamore leaf in A Walk Through the Tuileries gardens are evocative and ephemeral souvenirs, gathered at the time and collated later perhaps with a whiff of romance. His image takes us, in turn, on a stroll down the wide gravel, under the autumnal trees, a lingering taste of saucisson and red wine on our palate and with a sudden impulse to take a turn on the Caroussel. This whimsical Peter Blake print would make a great gift for any Blake fan. Legendary British Pop Art pioneer British Blake was born in 1932, and after his formal training at the Gravesend School of Art, then at the Royal Academy of Art, he broke away from tradition, producing work from 1960 on that would come to define the British Pop Art Movement. He came to be known as the Grandfather of Pop Art, and his art achieved iconic status with his sleeve for The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blake’s art draws on imagery from the popular culture of the past and present, as well as from the canon of fine art, thus creating an alternative, more democratic visual aesthetic. He freely mixes the ‘high’ with the ‘low’, ultimately inviting us to see beyond such distinctions. Always playful, and at times irreverent, he sets up the most unlikely juxtapositions across time and space, creating conversations and ‘parties’ to which all are invited. An abiding theme is an investigation, and celebration, of England and Englishness. Collage has always been a hallmark of Blake’s work, allowing him to freely mix found objects and images of people and other artworks; screenprinting, with its use of stencils and layers, lends itself perfectly to this technique, and indeed it was Pop Art that fully realised the potential of screenprinting as a medium for complex replication. More about Peter Blake: Sir Peter Thomas Blake...

Robert Indiana "My portrait was taken on Coenties Slip"...., 1993 Handwritten letter on an offset lithograph postcard Boldly signed in black marker under the letter 4 2/5 × 7 3/5 inches Unframed Unique one-of-a-kind hand written, hand signed note from Robert Indiana, dated 23 VII '93, written on the postcard depicting Robert Indiana's work "Mother and Father", published by the Farnsworth Museum in Maine. The note, done in black marker, is addressed to Don Allan II of Barrington, N.H. and reads" "DON - MY PORTRAIT IF YOU DO NOT KNOW, WAS TAKEN ON COENTIES SLIP IN NYC". Robert Indiana then signs the note.. (Presumably, the reply is in response to a letter or question this fan sent to the artist asking where Indiana's portrait was taken). Makes a great gift for Robert Indiana fans! Coenties Slip is a historic artist's address in the New York art scene - there was even a book written about it! Coenties Slip is a street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. It runs southeast for two blocks in Lower Manhattan from Pearl Street to South Street. A walkway runs an additional block north from Pearl Street to Stone Street Here's an excerpt from Art in America reviewing the book: "How does specificity of place play a role in art, enough to become more figure than ground, less a context than a character? This is one of the larger questions framing art historian Prudence Peiffer’s momentous new survey The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever. The book vividly documents a moment in the 1950s and ’60s when a cast of artists settled, at staggered intervals, in a three-block area around Coenties Slip, a street on Manhattan’s lower tip. Coenties Slip borrowed its name from one of the “slips”—inlets for the docking and repairing of boats—that once cut sharply into New York’s downtown waterfront, facilitating the busy circulation of fish, freight, and sailors between land and sea. While New York’s status as a maritime trading hub lured fleets of boats, it was the skeletal remains of that activity, by then sharply diminished, that drew artists to Coenties Slip. In place of industry, they found vast and vacant loft spaces, cheap to rent, in which they could both work and live (illegally, owing to zoning laws)....Peiffer’s book arrives nearly 50 years after the earliest attempt to honor the Slip: the 1974 exhibition “Nine Artists/Coenties Slip,” organized for an old downtown branch of the Whitney Museum on Water Street nearby. The exhibition showcased lesser-known inhabitants of the Slip, including Fred Mitchell (the first to settle there), Ann Wilson...

Silkscreen collage on paper. Hand signed, titled and numbered by Peter Blake. From the edition of 175. Image size 19 x 16 inches. Sheet size: 27 x 23 inches. Frame size approx 31....

Peter Blake Party (Sing Song), 1996 Lithograph and screenprint in colours, on wove paper hand-signed and numbered by the artist 76 x 55 cm Edition of 100 Peter Blake is a renowned B...