윌리암 블레이크 (William Blake)

William Blake I should state that from this point on the number has no correlation to where I imagine the artist falling in my personal pantheon. The first 4 are permanent fixtures in my mind. From here onward the order might (and probably would) change from day to day... depending upon my mood. As an artist obsessed with books, William Blake would most certainly need to included among any list of my idols. I've already written an extended post upon Blake here in the "Poetry Redux" thread on the Poetry Forum: http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=29869 I'll not go into such depth... but focus more exclusively upon his contributions as a visual artist. Blake has also been one of the most misunderstood and maligned of any major poet/artist. He is often portrayed as a half-mad genius/ visionary who spoke to spirits, a political naif, a curmudgeon and "outsider", a self-taught artist and poet who had little knowledge or experience of the art of his predecessors or of his own time. Most of these stereotypes have little reality to them. Blake attended virtually no formal school but was largely self-taught through his own voracious reading. He was exceptionally well-read and often of literature which was not part of the accepted canon of his time. Of course Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Chaucer, Ben Jonson, Spencer, and especially the Bible were more than familiar to him... but other sources of inspiration include Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, with whom he was friends and a political ally, Emanuel Swedenborg, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Plato, Plotinus, the Hermetica and the Bhagavad Gita, mythologies of the world from Egypt to Iceland to India to ancient Britain and even the Kabbalah. Blake's talents as a visual artist, however, were recognized far earlier. He developed an early love of drawing by copying engravings of masters such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Albrecht Durer. In this he was was fully supported by his father. Unable to afford apprenticeship to a painting master, Blake was initially apprenticed to the fashionable William Ryland, engraver to King George. Blake however would request that his father find a more suitable match for his talents, declaring that Ryland had "the hanging look about him". (In fact Ryland would end on the scaffold some years later, convicted for forging currency.) Blake spent his apprentice years under James Basire. Basire's manner of working was rather out-dated stressing the linear contours and avoiding the more painterly affects that would allow for replication of paintings or the creation of more atmospheric elements. His manner, however, was perfectly suited to Blake's own personal preferences for the linear sculptural form. Basire's chief source of income was the result of commissioned engravings to be made of architectural and sculptural details of English churches and cathedrals. Through his apprenticeship to Basire, Blake was exposed to the stylistic abstractions of Romanesque and Gothic art which would have been largely dismissed by most artists of the time. Blake's own art was often criticized as being crude and amateurish... full of incompetent distortions of anatomy... but in reality its stylizations are clearly consciously thought out and rooted in the artist's love of the linear art of medieval sculpture (among other sources). Blake entered the Royal Academy but immediately rebelled against the painterly masters then favored: Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, etc... and well as their British heirs, Gainsborough, Turner, Raeburn, Romney, etc... At a time when landscape and portraiture in oil paints reined supreme, Blake had the audacity to produce his own versions of the illuminated manuscript ala medieval artists... ...books printed and watercolored which illustrated his own writings... or his own unique interpretations of the Bible, Milton, Dante, etc... Among Blake's earlier works are his Songs of Innocence and Experience in which the short, lyrical poems are illustrated in a simple, almost child-like manner (It should come as no surprise that Blake's work has been mined for generations by children's book artists). Perhaps the most famous image and poem from these volumes is The Tyger: The poem itself is a lyric I have long held in my memory like so many nursery rhymes and poems learned in my youth. Not unlike a nursery rhyme, it's hypnotic and chant-like... seeming oh so simple at first... but soon revealing far greater depths of thought... questions about the very nature of good and evil and creation. I'm always struck with chills as the poet finally confronts us with the ultimate question, "Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?", before returning once again to the beginning, "Tyger Tyger..." and leaving that question unanswered... but perhaps provoking a little spark in our minds. Among one of Blake's most fascinating works is hisJob. This work is built of a title page and 21 engraved illustrations. At first glimpse one might assume that Blake has merely illustrated the Biblical text of Job... but as is usual with Blake, nothing is as simple as it first appears. The usual orthodox interpretation of Job is that he represents an admirable figure of faith and patience... a good man who is tested by God by having all of his worldly belongings stripped from him, the loss of all of his family and loved ones, and his own body stricken with painful disease... and yet he does not lose his faith in God. Blake's Job is something of a critique of this interpretation. Utilizing images as well as inscribed quotes from the Book of Job and other Biblical texts, Blake presents the idea that Job does not begin as a man deeply faithful to God... but rather as a figure who is faithful only in appearance. He may do the right things... but for the wrong reasons. Blake suggests that the various trials that Job undergoes amount to a spiritual journey... from a false believer to a truly spiritual man. In what in perhaps the most powerful image, Illustration XI: Blake presents a Job condemned to the fires of Hell. Devils reach out from the hell fires below in an attempt to drag him down. Still his hands are clutched in prayer as he looks up to the Hebrew God, Jehovah, hovering over him. Jehovah points to the tablets of the law which condemn Job while the lightning bolt of damnation leap around him. And yet... as Job glances down at Jehovah's cloven foot and at the serpent of materialism with which he is intertwined... he realizes that this immovable God of the law is one and the same with Satan. The inscription "I know that my redeemer liveth" suggests that Job has begun to imagine that there is a better God. In the Book of Urizen Blake presents some of his most powerful visual images: muscular demi-urge figures in the process of creation of the universe:

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Beyond his illuminated books, Blake produced endless volumes of larger watercolor paintings as designs for never realized books... books that perhaps would have demanded technical facilities beyond those possible at the time. These watercolors include some of Blake's most memorable images: Scenes from Dante: Marvelous imaginings of Milton's Paradise Lost: Biblical narratives: This final image... a Last Judgment almost blends the iconography of the Last Judgment with Christ's Harrowing of Hell or a Fall of the Rebel Angels in a manner that is very much suggestive of some Asian paintings! Blake's impact was slow to evolve... in art as well as in literature... but there are numerous obvious heirs. A group of young followers of Blake, including Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert, who titled themselves "The Ancients" would produce a body of graphic works clearly inspired by their idol: Samuel Palmer-Early Morning Edward Calvert-The Bride Even more important was the great British artist/writer/political figure, William Morris, whose masterwork, The Kelmscott Chaucer, designed by himself and Edward Burnes Jones, was deeply indebted to Blake: Perhaps most fascinating is the early 20th century figure of Adolf Wolfli, an artist confined to an asylum for most of his adult life, Wolfli produced a body of illustrated books, the central tome being a volume some 25,000 pages long, which tells the mythical story of Adolf Wolfli, later King Wolfli, later Emperor Wolfli, and finally Saint Wolfli. The tale is told in text, endless pictures, and even a musical score which utilizes a system of notation invented by the artist. There are endless similarities of style and vision in both artist's self-created universes... except that the latter artist is usually accepted as having been insane... a genius... but insane... which when looking at both his and Blake's achievements leads us to some difficult questions about what constitutes genius... and what constitutes insanity. ㅡ http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=590212