Marcel Duchamp’s World Tour – New Year’s Eve Parade at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool is a signed limited edition silkscreen print on paper with lithographic collage by Pop Art artist Sir Peter Blake CBE.

Price: £1950

Limited edition of 100

Silkscreen and lithograph

Making a trio with The Animals’ Fancy Dress Ball and DC Thompson Reunion, Peter Blake completes his imagined narrative of Marcel Duchamp visiting The Tower Ballroom, Blackpool while on a tour of England. Each edition is made using a combination of silkscreen and lithography; the first time Blake has combined these two mediums.

In the early 2000s Peter Blake made a series of paintings under the title Marcel Duchamp’s World Tour, these large works centred on the idea of Marcel Duchamp finding himself in unexpected situations: playing chess with Tracey Emin, or on a tour bus with the Spice Girls. His three new prints are an extension of this playful concept, and here Marcel finds himself at Blackpool Tower Ballroom in some of the most Dadaist company you could imagine. Blake’s homage to Duchamp is not surprising; he paved the way for many modern and contemporary art movements including pop art, installation art and conceptual art, as well as influencing many of the YBAs (Hirst, Emin. Quinn, Turk-all of whom are friends of Blake). Duchamp’s mission statement that anything an artist did could be art, has certainly been central to Blake’s work and his philosophy of fine art. Duchamp can be spotted in both prints; in New Year’s Eve Parade he is in the guise of his female alter ego, Rose Selavy.

The Blackpool Tower Ballroom is an obvious choice for an artist who has always been fascinated by popular leisure activities. He populates the ballroom with a magic crowd. Each figure and animal painstakingly cut out from his personal collection of print ephemera. The choice of revellers includes clowns, wizards, mermaids, sailors and tribal warriors, mirroring the Dada principles of nonsense and irrationality.