Peter Blake at 80 – The Royal Albert Hall – 19 June to 8 July 2012
Photo by Scorzonera from Flikr
This free exhibition coincides with Sir Peter Blake’s 80th birthday and showcases iconic album covers (The Beatles, Paul Weller, The Who, Oasis) and other works by the grandee of British Pop Art. The venue is the ground floor corridor of the Royal Albert Hall – an unusual but fitting location for a show with so many music connections.
Whilst many Pop artists chose to explore other forms of visual expression, Peter Blake has continued to use the medium of popular culture and everyday objects in his work. Viewers will recognise the references to Hollywood glamour of the 50s and 60s (Marilyn Monroe, Elvis) and the cultural exchange with British Pop music (the use of the target symbol for example, and the bright colours of psychedelia). Outside the Hall, the recycled double-decker CCA Art Bus, decorated by Blake, acts as further novel gallery space.
In the Butterfly Man series, Blake uses retro postcard images that he has hoarded over the years as a backdrop (Venice, Tunis, Eastbourne) whilst paying homage to Damien Hirst. (Hirst made a series of canvases with precisely placed dead butterflies). Blake fills the foreground of these prints, in the style of Sgt. Pepper, with an eclectic mix of tightly packed characters creating an image reminiscent of ‘Where’s Wally’ or Woody Allen’s ‘Zelig’.
The silk screen prints are for sale. You will need a few thousand however. This relatively small exhibition is well worth a visit if you are a Pop Art fan, or you want to ‘pop in’ whilst in the vicinity. Children might enjoy the exhibition as a relief to the nearby Science and Natural History Museums. Don’t expect any ground-breaking work, or works of conceptual monumentality however.
Antonia Edgerton
Drummond Watson
encarnardo
Lucy Ella Rose
Jill Hawkins
plainspeakingart.wordpress.com 
Peter Blake has created an updated version of his Sgt Pepper’s album cover. This BBC link lets you see the new faces!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17582676
The Sunday Times Magazine of 24 June 2012 contains an interview by the journalist Tony Barrell with Peter Blake and references an exhibition of Peter Blake and Pop Music just opened at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. While the interviewer claims that the invention of the phrase ‘pop art’ cannot be credited to one person, Blake did however recall explaining to the art critic Lawrence Alloway in the 1950s that he wanted to make art which communicated to young people in the same way that pop music did. Alloway responded; ‘What, a kind of …pop art?’
A further note on the critic Lawrence Alloway:
Interviewed by the journalist Mark Edmonds for a Times + evening at the start of the Royal Albert Hall’s exhibition, Blake commented that Alloway ‘disowned’ British pop artists once he went to America. Blake struggled to expand upon this comment when I asked, but Blake did say that he felt once Alloway arrived in the U.S., his close association with British artists was largely forgotten. Given that Alloway was a key figure in the Independent Group (the early fore-runners of British Pop Art – for example Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi) this seems very sad, and perhaps, something of a betrayal?
Found a Peter Blake – Frank Sinatra Door (1932) – in MUMOK in Vienna. The Pop And The Sixties exhibition runs until 2nd September 2012 and has a good selection of pop art on show, also including work by Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton. (I guess this painting is ‘pop’ rather than ‘sixties’!!)