Published in ‘The Guardian’, 27 June 2007
Article by Maev Kennedy
"No such thing as too much Sir Peter Blake, obviously, but he is ubiquitous just now: a mighty retrospective of his work, the largest in over 20 years, opens at Tate Liverpool this week, and several of the pictures that got away turned up in last week's monster art auctions in London. The artist formerly known as the father of British pop art, having just celebrated his 75th birthday with a bash at the Arts Club in London, has been redesignated the grandfather of British pop art. The company was like a restaging of his Sgt Pepper's album cover - stilt walkers, jugglers, pearly kings and queens, and Countess Carolinda Tolstoy, Jerry Hall and Harry Hill, Bill Wyman and Tracey Emin, Cilla Black and Justin de Villeneuve, all to a soundtrack from The Blockheads. The original cover, 40 years ago this year, included Carl Jung, Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde - and Mae West, despite her saying: "But what would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?"
