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Updated: November 2008

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Peter BLAKE thanks
Marcel DUCHAMP

British artist Sir Peter Blake recently recreated the famous chess game between his hero Marcel Duchamp and nude model Eve Babitz. This time artists' model Carol Holt played the nude opponent.
«The idea of it is to give [Duchamp] a kind of posthumous thank you. He opened the door that so many of us went through, the door of possibility, by saying anything an artist makes is art.» – Sir Peter Blake
It was prior to a major Sotheby’s auction in London. The actual wooden chessboard, created by Duchamp in New York in 1946 and immortalised in the game at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1963, was on sale and Sotheby's estimated it would sell for between £180,000 and £250,000. Here is the famous original:

Blake also relates very strongly with Duchamp via a recent series of canvases: his series Marcel Duchamp’s World Tour has been included in recent exhibitions of his work.

Duchamp plays chess with artist Tracey Emin in the desert surroundings of her video self-portrait 'Sometimes...' (2000) while three enigmatic cowboys wait by the bus. This has been said of Blake as an artist (The Observer, June 2007): …Perhaps because of his reliance on copying rather than invention, and his refusal to paint from life, some critics feel Blake is a graphic designer rather than a 'real' artist. He counters with a quote from his hero, Marcel Duchamp, who said:

«Anything an artist makes is art» (Marcel Duchamp)

But also explains, 'When I was at art school, I wanted to be a painter and the staff said, "You can never make a living as a painter - do the graphic design course." So I did that, then applied for the Royal College as a graphic designer, but I also sent one painting and Robin Darwin, who was the rector then, saw it and referred me to the painting school and they accepted me. So I have this odd history that I was actually trained as a graphic designer - and I still do a lot of commercial art. I mean, yesterday I was doing a book jacket. I think it's OK, but there are people who think less of me for that.'

Before continuing, notice that Rrose Sélavy, or Rose Sélavy was one of the pseudonyms of artist Marcel Duchamp. The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est la vie", which translates to English as "eros, that's life". It has also been read as "arroser la vie" ("to make a toast to life").
Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray of Duchamp dressed as a woman. Through the 1920s Man Ray and Duchamp collaborated on more photos of Sélavy. Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed several creations with it. Duchamp used the name in the title of at least one sculpture, Why Not Sneeze Rrose Sélavy?
Other 'Duchamp' works (by Peter Blake) in the exhibition are: «He (Rrose Selavy) meets the Spice Girls and Elvis» (2005)
And: «The Tarzan Family» (1995-2005)
Marcel Duchamp’s World Tour is based on Blake’s belief that wherever Marcel Duchamp stopped in the art world he had a strong effect on it. Each painting follows a fantasy journey in which Marcel Duchamp travels through unidentified places meeting other artists (Damien Hirst, Pablo Picasso, Edward Hopper) and popular idols (Tarzan, Elvis, Spice Girls). As he tours the world in his rock 'n' roll bus, fantasy situations play out around him.
In ‘The Artist’s Fancy Dress Ball’ Blake borrows well known images from high art painted with naturalistic brilliance: Picasso, dressed as Touchstone from Shakespeare’s ‘As you Like it’ and taken from Johan Zoffany's late 18th Century portrait of Thomas King leads the party, joined by Edward Hopper and Marcel Duchamp dressed as figures from Picasso's 'Family of Saltimbanques' with Damien Hirst as Watteau’s ‘Pierrot’.

“It's not a fake it's a Peter Blake
It's navy blue, it's crimson lake
It takes the cake and no mistake,
For goodness' sake take a
look at those Blakes”

(From the song “Peter the Painter” by his
pupil and friend, the late Ian Dury)

A Peter BLAKE mini-biography

Born in Dartford, Kent, in 1932, and educated in Gravesend, where he studies at the School of Art.

After National Service with the RAF, he trains at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1956. First exhibition is at the ICA in 1958

Becomes one of the first British pop artists, using pop-culture ephemera such as logos, pin-ups and masked wrestlers in his paintings, most famously 1961’s Self-Portrait with Badges

In 1963 marries fellow artist Jann Howarth, and soon after returns to the RCA as a teacher. The collage techniques he develops are used to their most famous effect on the 1967 album cover for Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Later provides the cover for the first Band Aid single

Retreats to the countryside near Bath, and in 1975 founds the Brotherhood of Ruralists with six other artists. The group, and his marriage, break up in the early Eighties, and in 1987 he marries Chrissy Wilson

In 2002 receives a knighthood to recognise his contribution to British art. Is appointed professor of drawing at the Royal Academy in the same year

Internal link:

«Chess-Theory Virtual Art Museum: Peter Blake Artwork»

© John E Hawkes - October 2007

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«Art world chess match recreated
Artist Sir Peter Blake has recreated
a famous chess game between surrealist
Marcel Duchamp and nude model
Eve Babitz ahead of a major auction.
© Copyright Photo: Sotheby's, London

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