Clive Barker

I find the horror writer Clive Barker to be a good analogue to William Blake, in part because I am writing my thesis on comparing the literature of the two, but also because Barker cites Blake as being a major influence to his work. Barker is perhaps a better example of revolutionary artist for this class insofar as he is contemporaneous and specifically engages with a fight to decenter ruling class ideologies.

Both Barker and Blake deal with concerns regarding ruling class ideologies and use their artwork and literature to fight against them. Barker's artwork, like his writing attempts to destabilize the white heterosexual male patriarchal society. He does this by privileging women in his novels. More specifically he places the power of the menstruating woman in the center of many of his narratives. (i.e. “Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament,” The Great and Secret Show, and Weaveworld)

Barker also places great importance on imagination both in his images and in his novels . He argues along the same lines as Blake re imagination. Many of Barker's sketches are darkly lined images of monsters, many of them contorted, deformed, anthropomorphous men.

Barker states that the male nude subject is particularly interesting to him because, as a gay male, he enjoys the male human form. What to me seems subversive about this subject of monsters is, if we look at his literature, we see that he views original power as residing in women and monsters. In many of his narratives he explicitly states that men are simply an after product of the copulation between women and demons. (“The Skins of the Fathers,” Imajica) How he emphasizes the male figure subverts the female nude subject. Because he uses the nude male body as a base for many of his pictures the female body is not the object of gaze, instead it is inverted. Furthermore, because the male body is caricatured and morphed into a monster it is no longer an objectified object.

One of the sources that Barker uses to explain the power he places in demons is Blake's “Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” In this, Blake writes that the Devil, because he symbolizes energy and imagination is a better source for art and inspiration when compared with the tyrannical Christian God. This could explain both men's preoccupations with monsters and devils.

Both Barker and Blake place importance on the transcendent power of imagination. As we can see in many of the above images, Barker often creates imaginative variations of the human body in order to subvert standard artistic forms such as the female nude instead privileging imagination and impassioned energy.

In general, Barker's art utilizes many of Blake's transcendent ideas in order to decenter ruling class ideologies of sex and hegemony. His art can be considered revolutionary because, through his art, Barker begs us to consider different forms of power and different ways to perceive the sexes through image and narrative.