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EXHIBITIONS / William Blake, the visionary poet-painter, seems to be more advanced than ever. In London opens a large exhibition of his works at Tate Britain 11. September, in Norway, his graphic series inspired by Job's book will be on display at Haugar as part of the exhibition "Metaphysics".




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

"The tigers of wrath are wise horses of instruction." William Blake

William Blake wrote: "I do not want to calculate and measure, my job is to create." It was the influence of the forces on the soul life and their activity in the world that became the subject of his poetry and visual art. When London's Tate Britain now opens the doors to the largest Blake parade in 20 years, it is first and foremost the visual artist who appears, but the poet is never far away.

He himself saw his poems as pictures and his pictures as poems. When Blake, who lived from 1757 to 1827, has proven to make the transition to that 21. century, it is because his art and poetry are all about transcending boundaries that we have set as the framework for our lives – boundaries many have become tired of. Parallel to this, there has been a need to deprive academics of their almost convulsive hold over Blake and return him to the popular environment he originally came from.

The meeting with Blake today is increasingly happening as a meeting between his art and the audience. Blake is to be experienced, perceived with emotion and imagination, not understood to death through an academic conceptual apparatus. While his books were once considered unreadable, today they have cult status. "When the doors of perception are cleansed, we will see the world as it is, without limit." This is a well-known Blake quote from which the band The Doors derived its name. And while beat poet Allen Ginsberg, in his own words, saw Blake in a vision, Patti Smith has called one of his songs "My Blakean Year".

No one who has dealt with Blake has been unmarked by him. Actually, he asks you to break down the known world and rebuild it with new elements. Some of the building blocks are sexuality, energy, and a new religion that was not grounded in moralism.

Hippie Time and New Age

In the post-war period, Blake was considered a political symbolist. His "Dark Satanic Mills" were simply factories. At American universities, many opposition 68 students read not only Marx and Marcuse, but also William Blake. From him they learned that "the tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of teaching." The poem "The Tyger" became a symbol of revolutionary energies.

The Ancient of days

In the hippie era William Blakes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell a reverse Bible for anti-moralism. The term "New Age" is also borrowed from Blake. He dedicates one of his poems "The Children of a New Age". He believed that it was the generations of the future that could open their senses so that one could take in more dimensions of reality.

You started reading Blake alternatively, but you actually read him like mysteries have always been read. Blake wasn't just anti-civil. He was one of history's greatest critics of materialism and rationalism. "Less than Everything cannot satisfy man," is one of his statements. What lies beyond the experience, and which we cannot know anything about, will be Blake's only thing worth exploring. It is the imagination, the imagination, that is the key. With that, we blast into real life, which Blake called eternity. Blake's "The Doors" are not only doors to sensuality, but to transcendence, to the world he always claimed to be in contact with. This page by Blake interested the parapsychologists. Blake has always lived a double life, one in the academic books, another in people's imagination and performances.

London Tate

At Tate, the audience will meet Blake in a new way. 300 works are from Tate's own collection and museums in other countries. Two of his visionary images – "Nelson's Spiritual Shape Leads Leviathan," and "Pitt's Spiritual Shape Leads Behemoth" will be digitally projected in giant formats. Blake thought of these as wall decorations, but he never experienced that.

His wife Catherine, who was a support to him – and the print and hand-colored many of his works – is now deservingly drawn from oblivion. She had always hidden something when times were tight. He called her Unity harmony, the female part of the creator Los (of Sol) – his alter ego.

Atan Smiting Job With Sore Boils C.1826, Tate Gallery

Also in London, where Blake has worked throughout his life, is the focus. He called it Golgonooza, the eternal city of fantasy, but it could also be a dark depth where all human beings suffer defeat. In this way Blake could express the contradictions that filled him and which he saw daily around him. The way they came in Songs of innocence and experience, which he produced at home by his own secret method and printed on his own press. This his only exhibition in the brother's shop in 1809 attracted few. It will now be reconstructed so that today's audience can see the pictures that hung there.

Haugar Museum

At the end of his life, Blake made strong illustrations for Dante and Job's book. It is the latter that appears on Haugar. "In his treatment of light and shadow, he surpasses Rembrandt," wrote art critic John Ruskin about this series – which showed the diversity of God's being. For Blake, Job's book is also about the bankruptcy of the moral law and the triumph of forgiveness. "First, God comes and hits you in the head with a club," he said. "Then Jesus comes and puts the patch on the wound."

The small circle of young admirers who came to his simple room on the Thames called it "the interpreter's dwelling". Blake was able to talk to them about their visions and their view of art without being met with skepticism. His noble poverty was respected.

Artist friend Samuel Palmer later said of him: “He was a man without a mask. Most of us go through life without knowing the forces that govern us or the outside world. Blake knew them and won control of them. Therefore, he was a truly free man. " 

geir.uthaug@gmail.com
geir.uthaug@gmail.com
Uthaug has written the Blake biography The Cosmic Forge.

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