Post on 10-Mar-2016
description
Museum for Myself
Peter Blake started amassing his collection of objects at the age of 14, just after he had started at Gravesend Art School in Kent and discovered a junk shop behind the train station. On his very first visit he bought a papier-mâché tray, a set of Shakespeare’s writings and small Army & Navy needle packet depicting the ship The Queen Mary. You can in fact see this last item on the bottom row of Museum for Myself, just above the title.
Blake has been using small-scale ‘museum’ formats over many years. For example, he has assembled a series called Museum of Black and White, containing only objects in these colours. Museum for Myself was made in 1982 and is part of a wider series of collages made from pop ephemera, discarded artworks, signed photographs, sweet wrapper foil, doorknobs and just about anything else you can think of. This museum brings together a collection of items from Blake’s interests and obsessions. Comedian Max Miller appears in a signed photograph right in the middle of Museum for Myself along with the signature of Marcel Duchamp, photographs of the Beatles and 490 miniature shells in a labelled glass bottle.
Museum for Myself Peter BlakeMixed media, 1982115.3 x 86cmcourtesy of the artist
A Museum for Myself
Peter Blake
1. Photograph of Brigitte Bardot
2. Swimming, Montague A. Holbein.
A paragraph from the first chapter
of the book is reproduced below:
“If it were generally known that
swimming is highly beneficial to the
nervous system, and repairs the vital
functions when a person is falling into
a decline, it is safe to say that many
of those thus afflicted would at once
determine to learn and practice it. We
are lamentably behind the Continental
nations in recognising that every boy and
girl at an early age should be compelled
to learn. I do not mean to say that Britons
are not fond of the water – the reverse is
in fact the case. A visit to any watering
place in the summer season will soon
convince anyone that the people of this
kingdom delight in taking a ‘dip’ wherever
possible. But what I must lament is the
deplorable number of people who are
content to paddle in the shallows – afraid
to go a foot out of their depth. For one
bather who can swim you will find thirty
who cannot.”
3. Army & Navy needle packet depicting
The Queen Mary
4. Mounted card reproduction of Marcel
Duchamp’s painted ‘demisphere’. Signed
“for Peter Blake. Marcel Duchamp”
5. Promotional photographic strip of
musicians, from left to right: Elvis
Presley, Jim Dale, Frankie Vaughan,
Terry Dene, Lonnie London, Michael
Holliday, Tommy Steele, Pat Boone,
Tommy Steele
6. Max Miller on stage, signed photograph
7. Windsor Castle emblematic material
patch. Marked ‘Room 540’
8. Advertisement. Text reads:
“Au royaume de Flore.
S’ouvrant d’amour Sauterelle
Pleure, au son de sa Chantelle
et voudrait à la noble rose
ouvrir son coeur mais elle n’ose
Oh majeste que n’es – tu mienne!
Pense la pauvre musicienne
Veritable extrait de viande Liebig”
9. Glass Jar. Labelled ‘490 Shells’
10. Tin plate depicting Dopey
11. The Sunderland Empire programme.
Monday 3 August, 1908
12. Flower illustration marked “Rosa camina.
Common Dog Rose”
13. Shirley Temple in cut out car featuring
the face of Shirley Temple
14. Metal paint can with wall hanging.
Marked “BLOCKHEAD”
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Selected items from Museum for Myself