William Blake was an artisanal imagemaker dubbed a ‘lunatic’ during Britain’s Industrial Revolution. The Getty Museum has other ideas in its new exhibition.
William Blake was a bit of a nut. That’s partly why we like him so much.
The great British Romantic artist, whose lifespan (1757-1827) roughly corresponded with that of mad King George III, aimed to unite the powers of individual poetic imagination with complex technical skill, in order to revivify what he perceived to be art’s moribund condition. The result was sometimes a wild invention rendered in unusual materials, usually combining various printing techniques with hand coloring. Such work deviated far from customary techniques of production or using established myths as subject matter.
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That many of his peers pretty much dismissed him only made Blake dig his heels in deeper. And we’re glad he did.
At the J. Paul Getty Museum, “William Blake: Visionary” brings together 104 works by the artist, plus a few by contemporaries (notably his friend, expat Swiss painter Henry Fuseli, 16 years his senior and a stalwart at London’s Royal Academy). Blake was convinced that art had been on the skids since the mid-16th century, when worldly Titian and the Venetian painters rose to prominence, so he set about trying to put things right. The result was often wonderfully weird.