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 superstition, religion and myst