Customer Reviews

An Alphabet by Peter Blake

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British pop artist Peter Blake continues his tradition of creating fascinating graphic art with these twenty-six silkscreen prints of the alphabet. Each montage mixes period graphic items relating to the letter mostly taken from children's spelling and reading books plus a liberal sprinkling of each letter in various type fonts.

Just seeing one or two of these prints is a treat but to see all twenty-six in the book is very, very repetitive I thought. Unfortunately the format doesn't give Blake much chance to vary the design. Each print has its letter large in the middle (a wise choice to make each one a different font) and at least three fixed graphic items in the same place twenty-six times: an alphabet across the bottom, a semaphore cigarette card and a graphic with the letter and illustration. The rest of the space is filled up with other graphics. It doesn't also help that the prints in the book are reduced to half size so that what text pieces there are remain unreadable.

The first few pages have an interview with the artist where he talks about his childhood and art training and the idea behind the alphabet prints. I thought it was an interesting book but I doubt I'll look through it too often.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I read an article about Peter Blake's work and as a collage artist I was eager to see the alphabet collages created by him. I was disappointed to discover the poor quality of the photo reproductions or maybe the original photos were to blame, or perhaps a combination of the two. I would have returned the book had it been worth the cost and effort.