The Radical Inventive & Philosophical World of William Blake: A Brief Introduction

Over time, we’ve fea­tured the work of William Blake truthful­ly usually right here on Open Cul­ture: his personal illu­mi­nat­ed books; his illus­tra­tions for each­factor from the Divine Com­e­dy to Mary Woll­stonecraft’s Orig­i­nal Sto­ries from Actual Life to the Ebook of Job; pairs of Doc Martens made out of his paint­ings Devil Smit­ing Job with Sore Boils and The Home of Loss of life. Blake con­tin­ues to cap­ture our imag­i­na­tions, regardless of hav­ing lived within the very dif­fer­ent world of the mid-eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry to the mid-nine­teenth — however then, he additionally lived in a world nicely other than his con­tem­po­raries.

“Blake belonged to the Roman­tic age, however stands utter­ly alone in that age, each as an artist and as a poet,” says gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne in his new Nice Artwork Defined video above. “He’s some­one who invent­ed his very personal type of graph­ic artwork, which organ­i­cal­ly fused beau­ti­ful photos with pow­er­ful poet­ry, whereas he additionally solid his personal dis­tinc­tive philo­soph­i­cal world­view and cre­at­ed an orig­i­nal cos­mol­o­gy of gods and spir­its designed to precise his concepts about love, free­dom, nature, and the divine.” It will­n’t be an exag­ger­a­tion to name him a imaginative and prescient­ary, not least since he expe­ri­enced actu­al visions by­out nearly his total life.

Not only a visu­al artist however “one of many nice­est poets within the Eng­lish lan­guage,” Blake professional­duced a physique of labor during which phrase and picture are insep­a­ra­ble. Although it “handle­es con­tem­po­rary sub­jects like social inequal­i­ty and pover­ty, little one exploita­tion, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and reli­gious hypocrisy,” its world­li­ness is exceed­ed by its oth­er­world­li­ness. What com­pels us is as a lot the pow­er of artwork itself because the “huge and com­pli­cat­ed mythol­o­gy” underneath­ly­ing the mission on which Blake labored till the very finish of his life. His ide­al was “lib­er­ty from tyran­ny in all varieties,” polit­i­cal, reli­gious, sci­en­tif­ic, and any oth­er type in addition to; in pur­su­ing it, he may exhausting­ly have lim­it­ed him­self to only one airplane of exis­tence.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Oth­er­world­ly Artwork of William Blake: An Intro­duc­tion to the Imaginative and prescient­ary Poet and Painter

William Blake: The Comment­in a position Print­ing Means of the Eng­lish Poet, Artist & Imaginative and prescient­ary

Enter an Archive of William Blake’s Fan­tas­ti­cal “Illu­mi­nat­ed Books”: The Pictures Are Sub­lime, and in Excessive Res­o­lu­tion

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Misplaced

Nice Artwork Defined: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Nice Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & Extra

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the guide The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­guide.