Pop music loves him. The art establishment shuns him.

At the age of 80, British artist Peter Blake is revered for his famous Sgt. Pepper Beatles album cover yet at the same time dismissed as too "cheerful" to be one of the greats.

Regularly stroking his wispy silver beard, and supported around a central London gallery by a walking cane, the man dubbed the "godfather of pop art" still struggles to come to terms with his place in the world of contemporary culture.

"It's a cross I bear," he said of the fact that his art is not taken as seriously as that of some contemporaries.

"Perhaps it's surprising that at my kind of age and with my infirmities I'm still cheerful," he told Reuters at the Waddington Custot Galleries where his latest show, Rock, Paper, Scissors has just opened.

Surrounding him are works ranging from some of his earliest watercolors executed in 1948 when he was 16 to The Family, a sculpture he completed just a few days ago.

What is striking is just how lively they are - plastic figures of Snow White and 30 dwarves crowd outside a model of a Swiss chalet in one humorous work, and the six-foot-long A Parade for Saul Steinberg is a model bursting with color and references to popular culture.

Blake concedes that he is often left having to defend his work in a world where "serious" art is cherished above all. While some may work from angst or anger, "my reason to paint is to make magic and to make cheerful things," he said.

Reuters