Clark on Blake

“The fact is that Blake‘s visions did not come from memory. From his childhood onwards, he had been an insatiable devourer of prints, and in 1784, on the death of his father, he set up as a print dealer. He continued to run the shop for three years, and a surprising variety of material passed through his hands, including, as we can see from his work, illustrated books on eastern religions, books on a Assyrian sculpture, and perhaps a few medieval manuscripts. Without doubt the items that influenced him most were prints after Michelangelo and the antique, especially of antique gems; and the book of engraving after the Bolognese painter to Tibaldi, which I have mentioned already. These visual experiences, deeply buried in his unconscious mind, appeared vividly before his eyes, and seemed to him visions expressive of his dominant ideas, although they often had no relationship to the original purpose of the image.”

“His first job as a boy had been to make drawings of the monuments in Westminster Abbey for a publisher named Basire, and he must’ve spent hours alone in that sacred, overwhelming place. This not only led to his lifelong obsession with recumbent figures, but provided him with types….Blake has retained the formula of Mannerist Drawing, and yet has given his design, the rhythmic character of Romanesque. One can even compare the functional anatomy of his nude figure, with its calligraphic, loops and flourishes, with the schematized drapery of a 12th century draftsman. There is no doubt that medieval art has entered deeply into his form-creating unconscious. Again and again in studying Blake one finds how the fashionable Mannerist style, the style that he had learned from Fuseli, was adapted to the far more purposeful rhythms of the middle ages.”

 Kenneth CLARK The Romantic Rebellion 1973.

Blake Quotes I like:

“In a wife, I would desire, what in whores is always found, the lineaments of gratified desire”

“Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained”

“The naked woman’s body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man”

“Exuberance is beauty”

“ Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed”