Self-Portrait with Badges
- Artist: Peter Blake
- Date: 1961
- Medium: Oil paint on board
- Dimensions: support: 1743 x 1219 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Self‑Portrait with Badges” by Peter Blake, painted in 1961. The oil on board shows the artist standing against a simple garden fence, wearing a denim jacket that was still a novelty in Britain. The jacket is covered with a patchwork of badges—an Elvis Presley emblem, a First‑World‑War medal, a French general, and a Pepsi Cola badge—each chosen to signal Blake’s fascination with North‑American pop culture. He even holds a magazine devoted to Elvis, a nod to the superstar’s influence on 1960s youth.
Blake used a mirror for the head, shoes, trousers and shirt, while the jacket was painted onto a dummy. This self‑portrait was part of a group of about eleven he produced over his career, but it remains his most recognisable because of the literal badges and the casual, almost candid, pose. The work earned first prize in the junior section of the 1961 John Moores Exhibition, cementing Blake’s reputation among peers such as David Hockney, Frank Bowling, and Pauline Boty. The painting was presented by the Moores Family Charitable Foundation in 1979, celebrating that very exhibition.
See it in person
Self-Portrait with Badges is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
