Collector of curiosities

by Petar PLAMENOV
 
Sir Peter Blake and the new British Wave
1-30 October (Sunday) 2011

The Museum Gallery of Modern Art
Address:
Sofia, 10 Oborishte Str.
Working time: 11:00-19:00
Phone: 02 943 40 00
Phone: 02 946 30 00

Visual artist Sir Peter Blake, 79, has been one of the most famous Pop purveyors in Britain since the 1950s, a time when he began mixing elements of high and low culture in a combination of collage and painting. He created some of Britain's most iconic images of the mid-20th century, contributed art to Britain's biggest bands and football clubs alike. 



Americans, too, know his work, or at least one example of it: He created the collage cover of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club" album. These days Blake takes advantage of the simplicity of using a computer to gather and cut and assemble images, allowing him to play with size without losing detail. But while the process is new, the aesthetic has a similar feel: His vintage settings (pilfered from old postcards) are populated with an eccentric slew of expressive characters -- in one series, a rabble of well-traveled butterflies -- and are deceptively more elaborate than first glance betrays.

The British artist's new exhibition in Sofia at  The Museum Gallery of Modern Art shows the main themes and images in his work.

“No artist is without influence. I don’t think you could look at anybody’s work and not find a link with somebody else’s. All art crosses over. Someone once described it as being like voices across the water; an echo is picked up and you might not even know it. Very rarely is art somebody’s pure invention,” honestly says Sir Peter Blake.



 A highly influential and original artist, Blake is often described as the godfather of British Pop art and Liverpool’s adopted son. This exhibition surveys his rich and diverse oeuvre, presenting familiar icons as well as rarely seen works. It includes major icons of twentieth century art. Blake says it is important to come out into the open about the fact that very little art is “pure invention” as he describes it. “It’s really about saying ‘Look this has influenced me’ and ‘Thank you very much,’” he says. He credits Kurk Schwitters with inventing the highly original collage style he adopted and ran away with during his career: “When Schwitters made the first collage by literally picking up a piece of rubbish, a sweet wrapper, a bus ticket and a piece of wood, that was pure invention.”  Sir Peter Blake's fondness for popular culture can be clearly seen in much of his eclectic collages and silk screen prints with images of Marilyn Monroe mixing with Mona Lisa.

Pter Blake is never particularly critical of the cultural iconography he plays with, just amused. Perhaps his best known work is the album cover for the Beatles Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. This strange, colourful huddle of people exemplifies Blake's style: among Beatles dressed in psychedelic uniform are Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, and a child wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt. Of all the various forms of Pop Art, Blake's is the most affirmative, his humour the most sincere.

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