Peter Blake

Pop Art Life explores British artist Sir Peter Blake’s lifelong interest in depicting people, both real and imaginary. It includes early paintings from his student days, iconic Pop art collages and realistic portraits on canvas, alongside experimental works constructed using his vast collection of objects drawn from pop culture.

Sir Peter Blake is an icon of twentieth-century and contemporary British art. Peter Blake: Pop Art Life reveals how central portraiture and people have been in a career that has spanned almost eight decades. Blake’s portraits of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe interrogate fandom and celebrity, while those of tattooed figures and wrestlers show him as a master storyteller and inventor of worlds. True to his Pop art origins, Blake is unafraid to make portraits in all their forms, from ‘shrines’ to his heroes made of collections of everyday objects, to portraits on canvas depicting real and imagined people, propelling the genre in new directions. His portraits are not simply concerned with capturing an individual’s identity, but encompass national and cultural stories, and give us an insight into the unique creative mind of one of Britain’s most cherished artists.

Peter Blake: Pop Art Life is edited by exhibition Curator Tanya Bentley and includes an interview with the artist. It features contributions from musician Jarvis Cocker and photographer Mary McCartney, as well as writer and researcher Clare Preston, and art historians Marco Livingstone and Natalie Rudd.