William Blake

In order to explain my position on William Blake's art and how it is revolutionary (at the very least in a Marxist sense) I think it is best to engage in a dialogue with parts of Northrop Frye's book on Blake entitled Fearful Symmetry. In a general sense Frye's book engages academically with Blake's poetry. However, because Blake's poetry and artwork literally and figuratively envelop each other,they cannot be separated and therefore one cannot talk about his poetry without also discussing his artwork.

Blake's work is revolutionary for several reasons. The foremost reason is that his artwork engages the reader in a political sense. At the time of his writings and engravings/illuminations Europe was immersed in the beginnings of the industrial revolution and also reacting to the politically charged French revolution. Through his poetry and artwork, Blake reacts to his anxieties against Lockean Empiricist ideas(arguing for imagination over logical positivism) and the proliferation of industry. What is also explicit in much of his work is his encouragement of revolutions against tyrannical governments. While I can go on at great length about Blake, I wish to look specifically at how he expresses these ideas and anxieties in his artwork.

Blake's almost radical objection to the mechanical reproduction of artwork is exhibited in much his work, often times in direct opposition with the theories on art that existed in his lifetime. It seems to be the case that almost every aspect of his life suggests his anxieties towards the mechanical or otherwise copying of art. Through exploration of his disdain towards the mechanical copying of art we can better understand the necessity for imagination and originality in Blake's art. Blake believes that the imaginative force can not translate through the copying process and any further copying deteriorates the already mimetic process of rendering an idea or image on a page; thereby insisting on originality. This is why Blake personalized each of his illuminations by changing the colors in each duplication to make each explicitly original. ¹

1So as not to plagiarize myself some of this is from an essay that I previously wrote on William Blake's poetry. Placilla, Corinne. “Breaking Mnemosyne's Mirror: Exploring Blake's Objections to the Mechanical and Otherwise Reproduction of Art” For Dr. Stefano Evangelista, Trinity College: Oxford 2009.

Above are two examples of the same illuminated poem "Tyger." The poem itself is engaged with the need for energy and passion and how the animal is an embodiment of it. We can also see here that, while the text and general outline of each illumination has not changed, the color has. Also, Blake purposefully makes the punctuation and capitalization inconsistent to further the originality of each piece.

To continue the original discussion, Fry writes that, for Blake art “ is a form of spiritual communication with God which is by its nature incommunicable to anyone else, and which soars beyond faith into direct apprehension. But to the artist, qua artist, this apprehension is not an end in itself but a means to another end, the end of producing his poem” (Frye 7). Both this and his statement that “what we see appearing before us on canvas is not a reproduction of memory or sense experience but a new and independent creation” (Frye 25) fights against Lockean ideas of epistemology that existed at the time. Locke argues that everything we know comes from our sense experience. Blake fights against Lockean view because he feels that imagination is necessary to be an artist and experience the world.

Here is an image by Blake of Newton, who at the bottom of the sea uses his measuring instruments to measure the world. Blake shows this man isolated in part to show how science (with its root in empiricism) actually abandons the world of imagination.

“Similarly [the world] is more real to the man who throws his entire imagination behind his perception than to the man who cautiously tries to prune away different characteristics from that imagination and isolate one” (Frye 21)

Although theses ideas might not initially seem important for a class on media culture, we can look at Blake's artwork as an early form of protest commercial. Because his artwork fights against common cultural beliefs by using image and these images are produced and introduced into the culture, his artwork becomes revolutionary for his time and for contemporary culture. Frye writes that “the sources of art are enthusiasm and inspiration: if society mocks and derides these, it is society that is mad, not the artist, no matter what excesses the latter may commit” (Frye 13).