This is quite a coo for Gallery 49, in Bridlington. The whole space will be devoted to  signed limited edition prints by Sir Peter Blake and other RA friends.

Peter Blake is perhaps most famous for his collage work and especially the cover he made for the Beatles’ ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. But he had hit the Pop Art scene long before that, emerging in the 1950s and becoming one of the best known Pop Artists by the early 60′s exhibiting along side David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj. At that time he sourced images from advertisements and music hall entertainment and was always interested in the juxtaposition of collage and use of popular images with fine art.
“from about 1954 I realised that I could paint the subjects I liked such as wrestlers and strippers and the rest of it. I was also aware of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in America who anticipated Warhol and Lichtenstein and I definitely based some collages on their work.” Warhol himself, he says, was less influential. “I’d already started by the time I came across him. I’d made this thing with Captain Webb matchboxes which he couldn’t possibly have seen but it did anticipate his soup boxes. Things seemed to be happening at the same time although we wouldn’t have known what the other was doing.”

Of course, later on in the 60s his most famous creation, led him to be forever in the minds everyone with the iconic creation of Sgt Pepper. Collage as an art form has never looked back.

Blake has continued to develop links with the music world with further Album covers for The Who, Band Aid, Paul Weller, and Ian Dury. (Blake had been Dury’s tutor at the Royal College of Art in the mid-60s)

His focus shifted to mythical elements of English folk lore for a short time  – his ‘Ruralist’ period – but then returned to his more populist roots, again linking with the music industry and covers for Oasis but also the Young British Artists such as Damian Hurst and Tracey Emin.

More recently, he made a reworking of Sgt Pepper with famous figures from Liverpool’s history, as a promotion for Liverpool’s successful bid for the title of European Capital of Culture 2008.

Blake has said that, “I have this analogy of a tree. The branches are all my collages and collections, graphics, printmaking. But the trunk is painting.” He has turned his attention now to painting, or ‘big painting’ as he puts it.

Nevertheless, all of those collages, collections, graphics and making of prints still feed his imagination and in this exhibition he returns with an interesting collection of prints along with his others from the RA such as Sir Terry Frost, Barbara Rae, John Piper, Bruce McLean and Donald Hamilton Fraser.

Gallery 49 from 3rd July until 31st July 2011

It was the first exhibition of female Pop Art and is now to be seen, I believe, at Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, although I can’t see it on their web site as yet.

This Times Square inspired ‘Ampersand IV’, is a stylized neon ampersand in a Plexiglas cube by Chryssa, one of the first artists to utilize neon in her work in 1965.

Mara McAfe’s ‘Marvelous Modern Mechanical Men’ harks back to Art Deco.

But I think my favourite is Black Rosie by Niki de Saint Phalle. Eight foot tall, this colourful, lumpy, playful figure glorifies woman’s roles without the usual half naked predilections.

Untitled by George Baselitz

Sir Joshua Reynolds by John Henry Foley

Sculpture Remixed is one the rooms in the DLA Piper Series : This is Sculpture at the Tate Liverpool. Was my favourite. Very cleverly mixed pieces contrasting each other. Take the John Henry Foley sculpture of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Amazing marble detail, glorious stuff to see up close.

And next to it an untitled piece by George Baselitz.

One made by one of the hardest stones and looking so soft and delicate I wanted to pull his cloak back to keep it out of the way of his palette. The other with no aspirations of deceit. It’s a figure coarsely made of wood, no disguising the material.

You had to enter through blackout curtains. It made me feel this was a private place – not yet ready for the public. Lots of contradictions. This was the first of the rooms that had a dark purple background, and pieces more noticeably lit with spot lights.

We were greeted by two machine workers, scared to death by two Redeemers and entertained by Degas’s beautiful Little Dancer.

Ghost

But perhaps the most spooky for me was Ghost. She’s an enormous seven foot tall teenager, gangly and evasive. She was ultra-realistic. I so wanted to touch her, or tidy back the strand of hair that had fallen forward.

Here she’s pictured on a white background, but in the gallery with the darker colours and spotlight, she seems even more vulnerable.

This is what irritated me so many years before. Conceptual art that was up its own arse. And I was about to fly off into a deluge of abuse when we were accosted by an incredibly polite and chatty gallery attendant who said…” Oh yes. You’ve seen this one before? It’s all about faith…” I get a bit twitchy when people start discussing anything remotely religious – especially when we’ve not been formally introduced. But he continued on, “Yes, well I think so. It’s about how people take things on faith and will look up to anything that’s set above them…”

Oak Tree is a glass of water on a glass shelf about seven feet high. So you do have to look up to it. Both of us had our interest piqued, so we took time to (not look at – as there really is nothing to see) read the ‘printed text’. I hadn’t given this glance before. And now, with this guy’s insights and more open attitude we read and understood a little more. We both appreciated the tongue in cheek Q & A description from the artist. This time I came away with a smirk and a realisation that I hadn’t done what I often preach, which is to, stand back and question what the artist is really asking us to think about. There was a fairly obvious clue in the positioning of the piece.  And it does follow the Duchamp declaration that any existing object can be declared a work of art. We really shouldn’t take anything too seriously.

It still begs the question, why should we have art explained to us? If it doesn’t communicate something immediately, then surely it has failed – especially if I have to read about it to get its message?

I still wouldn’t put it up on my wall in my home.

1890 Gustav Klimt

Went to see the Klimt at the Tate of the North at the Albert Docks during the summer holidays. Very confusing choosing the correct queue to go brandish my tickets. It was our cultural day out. I’d dragged along both offspring. Kate happy to go, Danny not sure what he’s let himself in for. For that matter, neither did I. I love the famous pieces but wasn’t sure what was on display.
1st stop the Beethoven frieze. It was a shock. Nothing like what I had expected. With that title I thought there would be some obvious musical references. But of course, more subtle than that. Three enormous panels taking up the room. Beautiful, serene figures floating or drifting across the space. All symbolic either driving on the heroic or displaying the worst human traits. Very classical. Horizontal/vertical. Reminded me of a mixture of Burn-Jones and Mackintosh. Just Beautiful. I loved it.

The Three Ages of Woman, Klimt

Upstairs was a more general exhibition. Wiener Werkstatte, a Hoffman, Moser, Werkstatte collaboration which, inspired by the British Arts and Craft Movement, wanted to incorporate design objects into everyday items – architecture, furniture etc. I’m not a fan of a asylum designs so I darted threw the throngs to find the 2D stuff. There was a room with early Klimts. Here was all his classically trained early works. Amazing in detail. Very tranquil in mood.
In a darkened room with a warning to those with faint heart, were the most surprising nude sketches. Practically all of masturbating women. Very revealing. Noticeably, very quickly drawn. These gave rise to an interesting conversation with Danny.in amongst some incredible landscapes where the patterns just take over the canvas was my favourite, The Three ages of Woman. Everything just fitted together- there wasn’t any sense of perspective, the figures just overlap each other in a floating space – that sparkles.

We later visited the other exhibitions down stairs, and the most heated talk was on the flimsy nature of modern art when compared with something as beautiful as the Klimt works.
As the one trained in art, I was having difficulties defending much of the other exhibits. In fact Kate was really angry at the blank canvases. And I think she is probably right.