This is what was said:
Stephen Sackur:
Reason I'm asking you about your take on culture today is that you said something that really struck me not long ago, and I wondered whether it's a fairly bleak thing for you to say, 'cos you said, 'I'm not appropriate any more. To be an artist at this point', you said, and I guess you mean age 90 in 2022, 'Well, some of the worst things you could be', you went on, 'are male, white and hetersosexual. Which means I'm in a difficult place, which is fine, I accept it'. Do you feel alienated from culture today?
Peter Blake:
I don't feel alientated from it, but it's different. Things have changed. I don't know what it would be like to be a young white male heterosexual artist now coming out of art school, but I think they would have a rougher time than, I don't want to go, I don't want to say if there's an opposite to that, I don't think there is. Whatever's happened, whatever's happening is happening anyway, so...
Stephen Sackur:
Did you think some of the things you have painted, some of the subjects you've taken on, some of the sort of feeling and imagery you've used, would it be difficult to do that today?
Peter Blake:
It would, yes. I mean certainly some of the early pictures of girls, it wouldn't be appropriate to do them today. I mean there was a culture when some of those pictures were painted in the fifties. The idea of a pin-up girl was acceptable, it was used all the time. The pictures of pretty women were, it was fine to use it. It isn't now. It isn't fine to us a picture of a pretty woman simply because she's pretty. The world has changed. The rules are different. What's acceptable is not the same.
Stephen Sackur:
You seem to be saying, you accept it, you don't want to fight it.
Peter Blake:
I don't want to fight it. Well, I talk to myself about it, yeah. I mean, some of it I think is awful and some of it I think, I dislike very much. But I don't want to fight it, I don't want to discuss it really. And I know if I did I would be in instant trouble. That would be unfair you know, I would be attacked instantly. Even if I said the odd word, I would be attacked probably.
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