Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Painter who pioneered British pop art and designed the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album cover.
On the island
Eight records
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The reason I've chosen that one really is it was a very important period in my life. To hear it every morning would be very exciting anyway, as a kind of overture to the day.
Albert Collins / Richard Penniman
this again sets up a train of thoughts and memories and if I can play this I can then think about other great rock and roll singers like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and I can go through all their songs in my mind and this would just trigger off the whole thing.
tremendous favourite of mine. When I was at the Royal College I went to the music hall a lot and saw all the greats... And this this excerpt is from playing at the Metropolitan Theatre and it's a bit where he's um he's gone off stage at the end of the first act and returned to do his own thing.
I love my wife and children very much, and it's played in a way for me to be reminded of them, but also in a way it's rather like sending a message in a bottle, as I hope she'll either find the bottle or or hear the record, and um realise I love her very much.
I like to dance to it. When I'm on my own in my studio I sometimes sort of dance around to it and I'd have great fun on the island dancing in the sand to to Pony Express.
another one to to remind me of of my family in a way. My daughter's name is Daisy, and this is a song called Whoops a Daisy by a friend of mine called Humphrey Ocean, and it's it's a pretty little song that I like very much.
my friend Ian Jury was on the dock to say goodbye to me and he slipped an advanced copy of his new long plane record in into my bag... That would also remind me of my other daughter, Liberty, who's a great Ian Dury fan, as I am.
Molly Bloom's Soliloquy from UlyssesFavourite
It would be very nice to hear a woman's voice on the island, and it would also be very nice to have an erotic record.
The Beach Boys are great heroes of mine, almost my favorite band, I think. And Brian Wilson particularly went through terrible troubles and and has come back to make some fantastic albums recently, and this is one of the songs from from one of those.
When the World Was YoungFavourite
M. Philippe-Gérard, Johnny Mercer
Record number two brings back ex extraordinary memories, and not even particular memories, but memories of of um of childhood and and um wonderful things that have happened.
is Mrs. Shufflewick, who in fact was was Rex Jamieson. It was one of the first acts where um a man dressed as a woman. It was a radio act, so you couldn't see him. And and he did it um as a a kind of drunken char woman.
Next record is um I I think my old time singing hero, Chet Baker. I I saw Chet Baker when he first came to London in the fifties and was lucky enough to meet him two or three times and love his voice.
Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3
Ian Dury, Chaz Jankel, David Payne
Record number five is is um my old mate Ian Dury. Um our paths have often crossed. I taught him as a student. I'm a hero of his and he's a hero of mine, which is a a nice combination.
Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager
I think friends are very important. I mean, it sounds almost banal to say it, but um I mean my wife has become a great friend of mine and friendship be it becomes more and more important perhaps as you get older.
Spice Girls, Richard Stannard, Matt Rowe
I've noticed in in in some some of the people on the island, um even if they choose all opera or all classical music, they sometimes put in a kind of popular song for street cred. ... So I think this is my popular song and it's to remind me of of my daughter Rose.
Judy Garland singing over the rainbow. ... I've always liked the idea of Troubles melting like lemon drop.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:20Was there a background to the arts in your family?
Not really. Um my father drew trains for me and that kind of thing. He drew rather well, in fact, and long after he died we found a little drawing book that he'd done when he was at at the sort of National School in Dartford as a as a child, and they were very good, but of course he didn't ever have the chance to go to art school.
Presenter asks
3:49What did you want to be as a youngster?
I didn't ever want to be anything else, but I also didn't want to particularly want to be a painter. It w it was chance, really. I was evacuated in the war, like most children, and when I took the examination for grammar school, I failed it. So I came back to Dartford after the war and went to a rather hard secondary school. And then, after a year there, had the chance to take the examination for a technical school, which included the chance to go to art school. So it really was chance that I went.
Presenter asks
4:20How did you visualise your career as an artist? Did you want to be a portrait painter or a commercial artist or what?
I didn't know. When I first went to art school, I was very young. I was only fourteen. I went to a junior art department. I mean, I actually started art school in short trousers, which is odd to think of now. Most of my contemporaries wanted to be, I mean, the big th thing to be was a cartoonist at that point. And oddly enough, most of them went into animation. I didn't know. I was advised to be a commercial artist because I wouldn't ever make money as a painter. I wouldn't make a living. But I think it's just something you evolve, really.
The keepsakes
The book
Lawrence Norfolk
I tried to read them and I've never had time, and I have to confess to him here that I haven't. I'll I'll take L'Emprier's Dictionary.
The luxury
I want to see my stomach muscles again. I tend to be portly, and I know they're there, so I'll take a a a home gym.
Presenter asks
9:11Tell me about that first important painting, On the Balcony. What was it? What style was it?
Well, it was a set subject. It was it was the diploma composition which you had to do at the end of your second year at the Royal College and the choices were, I think, a scene from the story of Lot or or on the balcony. And I suppose it was it was really the first statement I made in in a movement which became pop art. So it was the first really of of my pop art pictures.
Presenter asks
16:03Can you elaborate further on [how your version of pop art came about]?
I'm working class and my heritage until art school had been very working class and I went to wrestling with my you know my mother and my aunt and I went to jazz clubs a lot, I went to fairgrounds and and you suddenly realize what your sort of heritage is and that's what happened that I started to paint about it. It it's a very easily understood art and it got some of the old guard uptight.
Presenter asks
21:12Tell me about the Brotherhood of Ruralists. Is it a commune of artists or what is it?
No, we all live separately. … The definition of a ruralist is someone who's from the city but moves to the country. So what we're not, in a way, is self-sufficiency people particularly, although we do grow a lot of our own vegetables and things like that. But that's beside the point, really. Um it's just a group of people who are s in sympathy with each other. It's something that exists outside the sort of mainstream of the art world. It's rather nice to to have a family of other artists that you can show your work to and that you know will perhaps like what you do and you like what they do. It's very comforting.
Presenter asks
3:51Whose idea was it [to have this kind of magic crowd with recognizable faces on the Sergeant Pepper cover]?
It was Robert Fraser's idea. ... But I definitely thought of that, the magic crowd which could be made life size and with with cutouts and waxworks. We anyone could be in it.
Presenter asks
6:51How much do you think that jacket, that cover, and its design contributed to the success of the album?
I think a lot, and and I don't think the Beatles really appreciate how much. I mean, I don't know whether you've ever heard the stories that we were paid so little to do it, we were paid two hundred pounds... And the the album cover has won prizes, which the album doesn't necessarily win.
Presenter asks
8:15You've said you were a weird little boy. Why were you odd?
I think I was pathologically shy. I mean, I couldn't go into a shop. If if I was with my dad and he said, Would you go in and get me twenty gold flake or whatever? I couldn't. I couldn't go literally couldn't go in through the door. ... I was painfully shy.
Presenter asks
16:41What was the deal [when you were invited to become associate artist at the National Gallery]?
What what was offered was two years at the National Gallery with the studio, and you put on an exhibition at the end of that time. It had to relate to the collection, and there had to be some kind of link with the public. And the what I chose to do was have an open day on the last Friday of each month.
Presenter asks
26:31Does [finishing off numerous works in progress] mean that you have intimations of your own mortality?
I think you do as you get older. ... I've had a couple of scares. I had a a minor heart attack and I had a a tumor removed which um for a week I was told it was probably cancerous and I I think you do face um life and death at times like that. And as you I think you you you suddenly there is a point where you're no longer immortal. I mean you're aware of your mortality and you start to clear the desk.
“I actually started art school in short trousers, which is odd to think of now.”
“I think a definition of what is art is that if if an artist makes it, it's art. But then one has to qualify who is an artist.”
“The definition of a ruralist is someone who's from the city but moves to the country.”
“I suddenly thought, Well, my life's quite interesting. I'll paint the things I do, and that became my branch of pop art.”
“My reason for painting is a kind of a jolly one, a cheerful one. I mean I want to celebrate, I want to make magic, I want to do happy pictures, and that at times hasn't been very fashionable.”
“Our manifesto sort of was to paint magic and love and even sentimentality. And even now people can't accept that sentimentality can be a reason to paint. I mean it jars even as I say it now, and I think it's a very positive emotion.”
“The Tate show was the end of the second act and the National Gallery show was the finale, so it was the you know it was the big crescendo, the final the final kind of song. But then everything from then could be an encore, and in an encore you can do something quite different. So really I've moved on to the encores now.”