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Who Is Peter De Potter, The Artist Behind Kanye West’s New Album Cover?

A quick look at the Belgian man who designed The Life Of Pablo artwork.

February 11, 2016

Peter De Potter is a Belgian artist and a longstanding collaborator with Raf Simons. According to Interview, De Potter started working with the famous designer in 2001. “My role in the team was to come up with examples and visual quotes from the more hidden layers of pop culture,” he explained. “Not so much cult, more the unsung heroes, the little gestures, the B-sides, if you will.” More recently, De Potter has been working on Tumblr-only art with source material pooled from “downloads and screengrabs [of] photographs of strangers from their own social networking sites.”

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“The social network areas are source, medium, template, filter and supporter to the work,” he told DAZED.

Speaking last year about the importance of Jamie Reid’s artwork for the Sex Pistols, De Potter praised Reid’s output as “the work of a man speaking his mind, not of someone catering to an entertainment industry.” Similar descriptions have been applied to Kanye West.

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A representative for De Potter was not immediately available for comment.