03/05/08
Text: Nik Mercer
Photographers: Studio, Clerkewell Photographed by Nigel Shafran, 2005
Peter Saville is a man who needs little introduction. His iconic, modernist aesthetic was the visual voice of Factory Records from its inception in the form of album covers (Unknown Pleasures, Power, Corruption & Lies) and the interior decoration of the Factory/New Order-run Manchester nightclub, the Hacienda, as well as most other graphic components of the label. After what some might call a midlife crisis in the mid-1990s, Saville found himself at a crossroads. The art world was calling, as were the fashion and music industries—not to mention major corporations. After the turn of the millennium, a short stint in Los Angeles, and one too many negative encounters with businesses that wanted little more from Saville than a competitive edge in the marketplace, the weathered artist set about branding himself.
Two print retrospectives (Designed by Peter Saville and the recently released Peter Saville Estate), a handful of gallery and museum shows, and a wave of post-Factory work later, Saville is enjoying a renaissance. Anthem spoke with him about artistic subversion, the dishonesty of modern design, and how everyday life can be art if you know where to look.
So tell me a little about the book Peter Saville Estate, which complements your retrospective show that the Migros Museum in Zurich hosted two years ago.
PETER SAVILLE: Obviously and predictably throughout the 1990s as design culture became increasingly a part of ‘life culture,’ there came requests and sometimes demands from publishers for me to do a book. I put it off and I put it off, though. As far as I was concerned, I was still mid-career [in 1995]. Throughout the 90s, it was unclear to me what the destination of my work was going to be. I had this strong period during the late-1970s and 1980s—it wasn't entirely a youth culture phase, but it all revolved around a youthful pop culture. Getting into my late thirties, I realized I didn’t want to be using that platform anymore.
My record work had always been about me. In my thirties, I had to reach the conclusion that I was working in the communication world, and that I had to work with people! The hard part of growing up was that I lost that kernel of what mattered to me. But then art started to matter to me, and I got involved [in] fashion with Yohji Yamamoto in 1986. At that point, I found that the issues in which I was involved spoke more to me than music. I did a campaign with Yohji called Game Over that was sort of cynical. In the 1980s, we were over the fashion industry at the time...The business seemed to supersede the message, and we didn't like that. Eventually, the company said that we had to stop, as we were killing the business!
I spent the 1990s looking for a place in the professional and corporate world, although I had no idea where that would lead me. So in the 1990s [when I was first asked to put a book together], I had no idea what book I would do. I could mix my work one way and make it look like art or I could mix it another way and make it look like something else. Finally, around the new millennium, things changed. My colleagues grew up, the world changed—but then also it came to pass that I myself was a brand. I was [a] product of sorts and I began to think, maybe I could work for myself.
The people who approach me now do so in a very respectful way. If people would like my opinion on something, and they would like to reimburse me, then I’ll talk to them. I did the Current TV logo after conversing with Al Gore for forty-five minutes, for example.
The foreword of your latest book features an assortment of essays from artists and designers about your work.
PS: They all say the same thing. They all experienced my work for Factory when they were teenagers—which is a very volatile time!—and they all had the same experience, the same regard for Peter Saville. One person claims, actually, that his two greatest influences are Andy Warhol and Peter Saville.
Do you feel it’s a burden or a joy to be so tightly connected to Factory?
PS: It is a bit of a burden. People only come looking for one thing—but at least they come looking! I expected it, to be honest—[the attention was] past due. I knew that something special was happening at Factory, and it drives me crazy how Factory was tied solely to music for so long. It’s only now that people can and are talking about the artistic qualities of the label. Our general media is very dumb. Even with the last book, we were worried about putting the content on too high a level. This new book has been deliberately made to look like an auction catalog. So if I were to die and some people from Sotheby's came in, the catalog for my estate’s auction would look like this: big pictures that fill up the pages with some sort of foreword that sums up why [the deceased] was such a great guy.
Just looking over all your work for Factory, it looks like you have some sort of fascination with code, particularly on New Order’s Power, Corruption & Lies, OMD’s Electricity and many others.
PS: Power, Corruption & Lies remains my favorite work. I’m very pleased with it because it satisfies very different aspects of my sensibility. The sort of romantic, nostalgic and kitsch historicism and its juxtaposition with the hard-edged, cool, technical and industrial aesthetic of the back. The front and the back don't even really blend together—they just fit together. I like that sort of romantic historicism, and I also like that cool and cold industrial feel too. It appeals to both sides of me.
