«POP ART IS FOR EVERYONE»

Blake doesn't need to be this nice. He is, after all, a pioneer of Pop Art. It was he who designed the iconic cover of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band in 1967. He is one of the country's best-known artists, becoming a Royal Academician in 1981, as well as a knight of the realm, in 2002, and has always been popular with the public. What concerns him, he says, is making art as "democratic and accessible as pop music"; seeking an audience beyond the "culturati". With the characters he reproduces, often in collage – wrestlers, say, Robin Hood or Elvis – he is clearly reaching out to the mainstream. His HQ is a veritable visual treat. It's not so much a workplace, as a museum of antiquities. You name it; he's kept it, so within the complex of rooms in his converted builder's yard you'll find an amazing collection of amassed trinkets. From the moment you glimpse the waxwork of the boxer Sonny Liston at the entrance you realise you've entered a world of vaudevillian heroes and villains.


-The Independant
July 31 2008