It was one of the most iconic album covers ever and encased the Beatles’ eighth studio album. Sgt. Pepper is considered one of the first art rock LPs and certainly brings back memories for people like me who grew up with the Fab Four.
If you love music or art, whatever your age, you might enjoy an upcoming livestream from the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution with renowned pop artist Jann Haworth, co-creator of that Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club album cover.
Haworth, an integral part of the sixties art world and a passionate advocate of female representation in the world of art today, will take part in a livestream on Friday, 28th November, where she discusses the London art scene of the 1960s and how she and Peter Blake, her then husband, came to create their famous design for the Beatles.
So how did being part of the story of the Beatles, and her involvement in one of the most iconic album covers in pop history, go on to shape her later artistic development?
Born and raised in Hollywood by an artist mother and a director father, Jann Haworth’s work often referenced the world of celebrity and popular culture she grew up amidst. Settling in London in 1961, she enrolled in the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, developing the innovative practice of soft sculpture for which she became known. Her Old Lady, alongside her sculpture of Shirley Temple, later appeared on what not only became one of the most famous album covers of all time, but possibly one of the most famous examples of collage too.
After marrying her artistic partner in 1963, Haworth settled in the village of Wellow, where together with Blake she founded the Looking Glass School, a progressive primary school with an Alice in Wonderland theme where the signal box came fitted with a kiln, the garden came jewelled with a big chessboard and giant mushrooms, and the magical ephemera of Carroll’s much-loved tale was evidenced throughout. If involvement in one iconic record wasn’t enough for Haworth, Peter Gabriel’s Biko, a key anthem of the anti-apartheid movement, got the Looking Glass School treatment, with a Wellow School version being officially released by the man himself.
Following the end of her time in Somerset and her return to the USA, Haworth was led to reconsider the lack of female presence on the Sgt Pepper cover and what she by then perceived as her own omission from art history and the wider Beatles story. Under commission, Haworth and Blake had simply utilised in their collage the heroes suggested to them by the Fab Four, but with few high-profile female figures on offer for the band to idolise, it was no surprise perhaps if the female quotient on the cover remained low.
Determined to put things right, Haworth, with the participation of her daughter Liberty Blake, in later years began upon an accompanying work. If the twelve other females on the Sgt. Pepper cover alongside West had been largely fictional and firmly planted in the world of celebrity, Haworth’s Work in Progress Mural included 100 influential women who, like herself, held agency and were world changers. Women who defined their age, such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the aviator Amelia Earhart, notorious spy Mata Hari, and Rosalind Franklin.
Whether your interest lies in art, music or the wider societal changes that have taken place since the 1960s, Haworth’s story is a fascinating one. Her upcoming BRLSI livestream brings you the chance to hear it told from her own point of view, and like all Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution talks ends with a Q&A. If you would like to put your questions to Jann Haworth on any aspect of her life and career, this is a fantastic opportunity to do so!
Online tickets available at https://www.brlsi.org/.
