If Pop Art has a daddy, it's not Andy Warhol, American prodigal son, but Sir Peter Blake, a Brit who, at 75, continues to meld and morph the category. Peter Blake: A Retrospective (Abrams, $49.95) accompanies a current exhibit at the Tate Liverpool spanning the artist's copious 60-year career, and traces, decade by decade, his artistic expansion. In the fifties, Blake superimposed figurative painting with spatial trickery—signs, tattoos, and badges that created mini-pictures within the picture. The sixties saw those oddly comforting photos of Elvis and Marilyn—already seeming like ancient history—collaged with visceral colors and syncopated patterns, a visual bric-a-brac that emphasized the new frenzy for rock 'n' roll and led to what is arguably Blake's best-known work: the iconic album cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The seventies took a bucolic turn when Blake tired of swinging London and helped develop the contrarian Brotherhood of Ruralists, with its penchant for fairies (a common side effect of the English countryside). Since then, he has often toyed with canonical art-history themes, as in his nod to Gustave Courbet in "The Meeting" or "Have a Nice Day, Mr. Hockney" (1981–83), while getting comfortable taking his own place among the greats. No matter what he plucks from the cultural landscape, Blake cultivates his work with a rare combination of wit and intimacy. Put him in a museum, sure, but you can't put him in a box.

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