B is for BLAKE; A Is For Alphabet, B Is For Boxer, C Is For Clown, D Is For Dwarfs & Midgets and E Is For Everley Brothers. In other words, Peter Blake, the father of British Pop Art, is in Wales. EMILY LAMBERT takes a look at the show.(News)

Byline: EMILY LAMBERT

PETER BLAKE creates collages that are undoubtedly odd but never jarring or disruptive. His taste for cut-and-paste techniques does not, like most dada art, culminate in black humour. Blake is nothing if not light. He opposes nothing and negates nothing but instead basks in the icons of popular culture. His prints indulge the utmost veneration for Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, The Beatles, and Elvis.

If Andy Warhol's aim was to render culturally salient images meaningless, Blake puts his heroes on a pedestal, paying homage to them with neither irony nor ambiguity. He at once has affinities with Warhol and is his antithesis.

True, posing the Madonna beside roller skaters and weightlifters on Venice Beach - as in Blake's 1996 series Madonna on Venice Beach - suggests unadulterated irony.

But Blake's Madonna belongs there, blended seamlessly and comfortably into the scene. The juxtaposition is unfamiliar, but neither disturbing nor abrupt. It's as if the beach had always been her abode.

Blake is never particularly critical of the cultural iconography he plays with, just amused.

Indeed, Blake's worship of idols can be downright shameless.

His Alphabet series consists of 26 screen-prints illustrating each letter of the alphabet, from the obvious Z for Zebra, to the more ironic and humorous.

T, for example, stands for The Beatles, the iconic K represents The King (in other words Elvis Presley), then there's the esoteric P for Pachyderm.

This series characterises Blake's method of working, incorporating found images from postcards, magazines and popular ephemera.

But mixed in with Blake's predilection for iconic figures found in unlikely places is his love of the purely peculiar. Under O we discover Ornithology, Rainbow Babe represents R and U is a photographic collage of Unusual People.

Perhaps his best known work is the album cover for The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This strange, colourful huddle of people exemplifies Blake's style: among Beatles dressed in (psychedelic) uniform are Marylin Monroe (again), Charlie Chaplin, and a child wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt.

Thirty years later, Blake returned to his love of crowds with Demonstrations in a Department Store (1998): cowboys, circus girls, nudes standing on each other's heads, dressed-up young boys, a model aeroplane flying down from the ceiling and Greek statues.

In juxtapositions that are always joyous, Blake makes the members of this motley crew belong together.

Of all the various forms of Pop Art, Blake's is the most affirmative, his humour the most sincere.

B is for BLAKE; A Is For Alphabet, B Is For Boxer, C Is For Clown, D Is For Dwarfs & Midgets and E Is For Everley Brothers. In other words, Peter Blake, the father of British Pop Art, is in Wales. EMILY LAMBERT takes a look at the show.(News)

Byline: EMILY LAMBERT

PETER BLAKE creates collages that are undoubtedly odd but never jarring or disruptive. His taste for cut-and-paste techniques does not, like most dada art, culminate in black humour. Blake is nothing if not light. He opposes nothing and negates nothing but instead basks in the icons of popular culture. His prints indulge the utmost veneration for Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, The Beatles, and Elvis.

If Andy Warhol's aim was to render culturally salient images meaningless, Blake puts his heroes on a pedestal, paying homage to them with neither irony nor ambiguity. He at once has affinities with Warhol and is his antithesis.

True, posing the Madonna beside roller skaters and weightlifters on Venice Beach - as in Blake's 1996 series Madonna on Venice Beach - suggests unadulterated irony.

But Blake's Madonna belongs there, blended seamlessly and comfortably into the scene. The juxtaposition is unfamiliar, but neither disturbing nor abrupt. It's as if the beach had always been her abode.

Blake is never particularly critical of the cultural iconography he plays with, just amused.

Indeed, Blake's worship of idols can be downright shameless.

His Alphabet series consists of 26 screen-prints illustrating each letter of the alphabet, from the obvious Z for Zebra, to the more ironic and humorous.

T, for example, stands for The Beatles, the iconic K represents The King (in other words Elvis Presley), then there's the esoteric P for Pachyderm.

This series characterises Blake's method of working, incorporating found images from postcards, magazines and popular ephemera.

But mixed in with Blake's predilection for iconic figures found in unlikely places is his love of the purely peculiar. Under O we discover Ornithology, Rainbow Babe represents R and U is a photographic collage of Unusual People.

Perhaps his best known work is the album cover for The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This strange, colourful huddle of people exemplifies Blake's style: among Beatles dressed in (psychedelic) uniform are Marylin Monroe (again), Charlie Chaplin, and a child wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt.

Thirty years later, Blake returned to his love of crowds with Demonstrations in a Department Store (1998): cowboys, circus girls, nudes standing on each other's heads, dressed-up young boys, a model aeroplane flying down from the ceiling and Greek statues.

In juxtapositions that are always joyous, Blake makes the members of this motley crew belong together.

Of all the various forms of Pop Art, Blake's is the most affirmative, his humour the most sincere.