WILLIAM BLAKE at the TATE BRITAIN on the 27th of January 2020
WILLIAM BLAKE at the TATE BRITAIN on the 27 th of January 2020 William Blake seems a necessary antidote to this era of Brexit, Climate Change and renewed crisis in international politics and affairs. Blake too lived in such a time, when it seemed that cataclysmic, transformative forces were re-shaping the world. Although his art seldomly references the external world, many of his earth-shattering images echo the tumult that surrounded him. He produced images like Albion Rose (1793) that herald the dawning of a new age of hope, optimism and resolution summed up in his dictum: ‘If the doors of perception are cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.’ ( The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ) Blake was born in London in 1757. He lived at a time when two great philosophies dominated society, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Blake’s work bears the imprint of both. The Enlightenment sought to challenge the grip on society of superst...