BBC Four Goes Pop: Idents by Peter Blake, Derek Boshier & Peter Phillips

Q. What inspired you to create your BBC Four ident?

A. I talked to my daughter Rose, who is more conversant with animation, and she agreed to take on the project with animator Andy Baker.

Rose found an image from an illustration I had made in the 1950s, of a girl with lots of thought bubbles coming out of her head. This sat very nicely with the BBC Four ethos, being inquisitive, thoughtful and innovative.

In these bubbles we substituted the images I had originally produced with found objects from my studio.We loved the idea of black and white television and wanted to give the ident a sixties mood without being too retrospective.

Q. Do you think the energy and vision of Pop Art can be found in the art world today?

A. When Pop Art first happened in the mid 1950s, my aim was to make Art available and populist. Certainly the Y.B.A. artists picked up on the energy and vision that we had in the 1950s and '60s.

Q. Which three words would you use to describe Pop Art?

A. Popular Culture Appropriation

Q. What inspired you to create your BBC Four ident?

A. The idea of tackling the given brief of 40 second film and the continuation of my current film making activities. Also I had always wished I could make a TV commercial... still do.

Q. You were featured in Ken Russell’s 1962 documentary Pop Goes the Easel, were you aware that in the early '60s you were living through a special time in British art and were at the centre of it?

A. No.

Q. In Pop Goes the Easel, you were featured alongside three other exceptional young talents, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Pauline Boty. What did you admire in their work? Was there ever any rivalry between you?

A. Yes I certainly admired their work and we were friends, and no never any rivalry - in fact encouragement and shared excitement. We were equally excited about the popular culture we were making the art from, and making art out of what we were living.

Q. What did Pop Art have to say about the world?

A. That the everyday world around you is exciting. Popular culture is exciting and art can even be made about it.

Q. Are terms like Pop Art useful in art, can a title ever truly capture a movement in all its breadth?

A. Useful as a start.

Q. Is there an artist or artwork which has particularly inspired you in your career?

A. Just too many and too diverse to list.

Q. Do you think the energy and vision of Pop Art can be found in the art world today?

A. Yes, certainly, Pop Art has become a continuum. Probably influencing societally more than any other art movement in the 20th / 21st century.

Q. Which three words would you use to describe Pop Art?

A. There are so many words I can think of, it’s nearly impossible to boil them down to three. I suppose the first three that come to mind are: Elusion, Delusion & Transformation.

Q. What inspired you to create your BBC Four ident?

A. Because I’m currently in Australia, I had to work with what I have available from the period with me here in Australia. I wanted to stick with period pieces and the evolution of my work. Plus, I like the way the colour transformation goes from black-and-white to colour, and since I’ve never seen my paintings move before, this brings them to life in a different way.

Q. You were featured in Ken Russell’s 1962 documentary Pop Goes the Easel, were you aware that in the early '60s you were living through a special time in British art and were at the centre of it?

A. I had no idea at the time because I was too busy living and experiencing it. Looking back, it was a special time, but who’s to say today won’t look that way in the future?

Q. In Pop Goes the Easel, you were featured alongside three other exceptional young talents, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Pauline Boty. What did you admire in their work? Was there ever any rivalry between you?

A. They each had an individual identity. I respected that, and still do. There was never any rivalry. It was about mutual self-respect.

Q. What did Pop Art have to say about the world?

A. It didn’t say anything about the world. It was an interpretation of the world through our, the artist’s, eyes. So in a way, it was merely a reflection of the world. Personally, I visualized and aesthetically wanted to put together images of a collective society and, as I think of it, a spanner in the machine.

Q. Are terms like Pop Art useful in art, can a title ever truly capture a movement in all its breadth?

A. I don’t think so. As stated earlier, I strongly respect individualism in art.

Q. Is there an artist or artwork which has particularly inspired you in your career?

A. First, I never thought of my art as a career. It was my drug, my joy. An addiction of sorts, but not a career. Regarding my inspiration, in school, they were teaching us still life and classical painting. So in a way, they were my antecedents, but what really influenced me was living in London during that time. As Bob Dylan said, the times were ‘a changing.

Q. Do you think the energy and vision of Pop Art can be found in the art world today?

A. Strong energy and bold vision come through when an artist is free to do their own thing. Today’s western culture makes it too easy to pull people into groupthink. I see it in rare cases, but my advice to artists today would be not to fall into the downgrading of the individual spirit.