Things I Learned from Peter Saville

I've been a big fan of Peter Saville's work. He is widely known for this album art of Factory Artists. I recently needed to do a ran across this page about him on his website. There is something to learn as we will always be students.
-Courtney

A Few Observations On How To Behave otherwise titled 'Things I Learned from Peter Saville'

1 Never answer phone calls directly until after midday.
2 Use all surfaces as work space including the carpet and coffee tables and closets and drawers.
3 Think of your persona. Think of your house as your persona. Think of possessions as extensions of your persona.
4 The preparation of coffee is an art form.
5 Treat all institutions with heavy scepticism.
6 Treat yourself sceptically but very indulgently.
7 Money is to be spent only. Well and fast.
8 Collect all ephemera around your life and work and archive it incessantly.
9 Never learn computer programs. Don't get that involved with technical information.
10 Take notes. Carry paper.
11 Areas of comprise have potential.

When I met Peter Saville he seemed at first like a slightly reclusive graphic designer living in a block of flats from the 1960s in Mayfair. 'The apartment', as it was called, was a consummate corporate hideaway. A throwback to another era. But what corporation? A space funded by entities unseen. An agenda that was never entirely clear, or if it ever was, Peter never divulged it. A bat cave for the nocturnal. Dark grey interior. Endless couches. Constant coffee service and unceasing advice from Peter on how to proceed. A perfect meeting point. I used to bring friends over too. They didn't quite know how to enter the dialogue as it presupposed a 'project', a need, a treatment. You had to turn yourself into one. Of course at that stage it was just about a publication I had asked Peter to prepare for my first Paris exhibition. I remember he accepted but said he didn't want to be a tailor. By this I guess he meant the act of judging how much white would be on my pages. I thought this was understandable. He seemed to be doing a send-up of the role of graphic designer. Yet he was very good at the process of spending time discussing the possibilities, judging the photography, debating the meaning and educating me about the endless other projects he was supposed to be doing to actually pull in some money. This of course was flattering and generous. The wasting of time has a precious economy all of its own.

He was often in a blue silk paisley robe by Sulka, complaining about the various commercial pressures upon him. He seemed to fetishize being an anti-capitalist. I think I even drew him this way a few times. It always seemed to be about 3pm in the main room as the vertical shades sequestered what little sun there was in London. A bit like Vegas in the sense of a commercial logic or actual strategy of ignoring the clock or at least natural light. The bathroom was like a Richard Hamilton painting. I remember it clearly; black marble, orchids, a box of Kleenex and a large container of liquid ant-bacterial soap. This was Peter's still life. Intimate but very generic too. Men's leather slippers next to a chair. Always in the same place. Seemingly never worn. It was an arrangement to be noticed. To be observed. To be imparted like a meticulous letter or font.

- Sarah Morris



I first came in contact with the work of Peter Saville through the cover art of Joy Division's 1979 album Unknown Pleasures.

I had moved to New York City in late 1977. As an aspiring young artist I quickly realised that the New York art world I had fantasised about becoming part of was dying, and the real excitement was happening in the NYC underground music scene. I went regularly to CBGB's to see the Ramones, Television and the Talking Heads, and listened to the Sex Pistols and the Clash in my studio. The energy and power of punk, new wave, and no wave music became the fuel for my creative engine. It was an awakening. This music felt like mine: a revenge on the failure of the hippie love generation.

A big part of my life then was going on weekly trips to the local underground record shop. It was like a trip to a new universe -- and the far reaches of the galaxy were usually in the import section. Money was always tight then so one's purchase had to be on the mark. But that risk was part of the fun of it.

The visual component of the album cover was monstrously important. It functioned like a visual-aural transporter. I never knew what a band sounded like until I played the album back in my studio, making it my private discovery. The album cover was how I would judge what record I ultimately bought. And that is how I stumbled upon Joy Division and Peter Saville.

On one of these exploratory trips to the record shop I distinctly remember going through the import racks and I must admit that I didn't really like the visual 'punk' sensibility. It looked too obvious. I was looking for something new, something in sync with what I was thinking about in my art. I was looking for images that had a radical visual elegance, historical yet irreverent; and having a certain distance. And there--between albums by the Jam and the Junk Circus--I found Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures.

The stark elegance of its cover and the graphic simplicity was eerie yet beautiful; but above all, radically different from all the endless punk crap covers. The striking, white, electronic waveform drawing centered on the black textured cover just hummed. The waveform image was a wave graph of a dying star. I mean come on! 'How fucking great is that?' I thought. A dying star for a dying culture on a dying planet! It was such a huge concept, yet so direct--it just blew me away. When I finally played the record in my studio I became hypnotized by the music. I will always associate that moment, music and album cover with the beginning of my professional life as a practicing artist. I would listen to it endlessly while I was working, usually late at night, and I would always keep the cover in view.

Saville's visual style exploded with New Order. His source material seemed to be coming from the same place that many artists of my generation were using: only Saville used them, at times significantly better. It just killed me with jealousy--how better to phrase a compliment? He helped reaffirm many of the notions I had had about the kind of art I wanted to make and I will always be indebted to his vision.

I have always felt that music is such a pure form. It always amazed me how Peter was capable of creating an album cover that did not infringe, hinder, ground or marginalise the music it represented, but simply enhanced one's personal imagination as the listener. It is extraordinary how the music is so lovingly carried in a Saville package--like a sacred message that need not be advertised, but was simply treated with reverence and respect.

After a while, seeing Saville's work felt like a one-way conversation with a good friend. And so, with that, I sought him out. We quickly became friends and, though I see him rarely these days, I always watch what he is doing. From what I have seen and read, Saville's visual sensibility has always been a few steps ahead in his world of design. Yet somehow he has always been in sync with the artists of my world. I believe that when the ashes clear, Saville's work will be in the art museums right next to the generation he ran with and inspired.

- Robert Longo

These two excerpts were first published in Peter Saville Estate 1-127 the catalogue for his exhibition at the migros museum fur gegenwartskunst Zurich 12th November, 2005-8th January, 2006 Copyright Sarah Morris, Robert Longo 2007

"And you, forgotten... no longer setting out for the haçienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old almanac. Now that's finished. You'll never see the haçienda. It doesn't exist. The haçienda must be built."

via.
http://www.btinternet.com/~comme6/saville/essay4.htm