Blake and the Supremacy of the Imagination – The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life.
My last entry to this newsletter a fortnight ago, introduced the relatively modern theory of art introduced by Michael Podro. This week I am going back in time to the early Romantic period and looking at the theory produced by the poet, philosopher, painter and engraver William Blake. But first it might be worth just recapping on the three principles of Podro’s theory because in a number of ways Blake’s ideas were presaging the work of Podro. The three principles were:
- Art reveals through the skill of the artist some aspect of a subject that would not be immediately apparent.
- The artist’s depiction of an object makes a reference to the perceptual process of the viewer which enables an understanding to be achieved through, for example, the use of analogy.
- The artist engages with the state of mind of the viewer to achieve an elevated or heightened emotional response to the work of art which may suggest a transcendence that lies behind the objects depicted.
Blake’s theory, falling initially into the first of the Podro categories outlined above, concerned mimesis, suggesting imitation or representation, i.e. more than mere copying. This followed the classical theory which gives prominence to line over form or colour. In other words Blake belonged to the ‘two dimensional linearists in the old aesthetic battle between linear and painterly schools’.[i]
In Art – A New History (2003) Johnson summarises the Greek aesthetic as consisting of ‘flexible form, artistic responsibility and ocular realism’.[ii] Flexible form and the emphasis online develops, Blake suggests, from the evolution of the temple – the buildings which, for the Greeks, had considerable religious significance. The Greeks were also concerned with the ideal – that in the words of Aristotle ‘Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish.’[iii] In discussing this statement Kenneth Clark (1903-1983) highlights in The Nude – a Study of Ideal Art Blake’s comment that ‘All Forms are Perfect in the Poet’s Mind but these are not Abstracted or compounded from Nature, but are from Imagination.’[iv] Summarising, Clark writes:
What both Reynolds and Blake meant by ideal beauty was really the diffused memory of that particular physical type which was developed in Greece between the years of 480 and 440 B.C. and which in varying degrees of intensity and consciousness, furnished the mind of Western man with a pattern of perfection from the Renaissance until the present century.[v]
Clark’s and Johnson’s views then coalesce with consideration of the Ancient Greek love of mathematics which is exhibited both in the Temple and in the proportions of Vitruvian Man drawn by Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) and by the architect Cesare Cesariano (1475-1573) in 1521. Whereas Clark was content to accept Blake’s theory about art perfecting form and accepted that Blake had ‘an exceptional power of secreting retinal images’ he felt that Blake was unable to achieve that ‘long and painful interaction between ideal form remembered and natural appearances observed, which is the foundation of all great drawing from Michelangelo to Degas’.[vi] At this stage in the development of Blake’s theory, there is little to suggest that he would later break away from the views of the prominent art historian of the time, Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768), but whereas the latter was keen to ensure that rational thought would underlie his views on the Greek Ideal, Blake would depart from this attention to the rational, by giving much greater prominence to the use of the imagination.[vii]
Setting aside the question of Blake’s practical ability and continuing to think in terms of Podro’s categories Blake highlighted three different types of copying which take us from mimesis towards the spiritual. First there are the ‘direct “servile” copies “both of Nature and Art” that are the musical scales of the visual artist, learning the “language of Art” by copying’.[viii] The second form of copying is the imitation of nature, with the third being the copying of ‘imaginative forms from the artist’s own mind, which is the copying every artist should be trying to do’.[ix] In Blake’s own words:
The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life is this:
That the more distinct, sharp and wiry the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and bungling. Great inventors, in all ages, knew this: Protogenes and Apelles knew each other by this line. Rafael {sic} and Michael Angelo, and Durer, are known by this and this alone. The want of this determinate and bounding form evidences the want of idea in the artist’s mind, and the pretence of the plagiary in all its branches.[x]
Although line, form and the approach to the ideal in art proposed by Aristotle were very important to Blake, the imagination, as mentioned above, was all important. Unsurprisingly Blake had his own very precise way of thinking about the ‘Imagination’, which is set out clearly by David Erdman (1911-2011) and summarised by Morris Eaves as follows:-
The imagination…is “the Man” who can know immediately:
[God =] Imagination or the Human Eternal Body in Every Man
[Spirit =] Imagination or the Divine Body in Every Man.
If this definition is placed within the comment above that ‘All Forms are Perfect in the Poet’s Mind but these are not Abstracted or compounded from Nature, but are from Imagination’, then we can see that Blake is clearly referring to the art which falls into the third of Podro’s categories. To recapitulate, this is art which endeavours to express the concept of transcendence existing beyond the images depicted.
At this juncture it is worth highlighting the work of the great art historian Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001) who suggests that in examining an image, there are three components to the analysis – representation, symbolisation and expression.[xi] I would propose that in Blake’s philosophy of art, symbolisation and expression are merged into one and are given precedence over representation by the artist. From this it follows that the personality and character of the artist attains an importance that would not apply to an artist working only in the area of copying that which he or she sees. The fine judgement that needs to be made by the viewer is to consider the extent to which transcendence has been revealed in a work of art; that is, in the interaction between the viewer and the artist, there will follow an emotional response the value of which can only be judged by the viewer.
This brings us to a very important and concluding point in the consideration as to whether or not a painting could be considered to be revealing that which lies beyond the veil or, if you prefer it, a painting which points toward the transcendent. This important factor is the mind of the viewer who must be susceptible to or open to seeing that which the artist is intending to convey. In other words, even though the artist, be they Samuel Palmer or Marc Rothko, is producing a work of a spiritual nature it is the interplay between artist and viewer that creates that moment when, like a sudden flood of light illuminating the stage in a theatre, as the curtain rises and a glimpse of what may lie beyond is revealed.
Dr David Greenwood d.greenwood@uwtsd.ac.uk September 2021
[i] Eaves, M. William Blake’s Theory of Art. Princeton Princeton University Press 1982. P. 19. (Eaves quotes many sources in support of this statement. This book is concerned with the Blake’s theory of art rather than his practise of art and poetry.)
[ii] Johnson, P Art – A New History London Wiedenfeld and Nicholson 2003 p. 51.
[iii] Clark, K The Nude – A Study of Ideal Art London The Reprint Society 1958 p. 9. quoting Aristotle.
[iv] Clark, K. p. 11, quoting Blake. To Blake form and outline were synonymous.
[v] Ibid. p. 11.
[vi] Ibid. p. 207.
[vii] A full discussion of the relationship between beauty and proportion, which was so important to ancient Greek philosophy, is beyond the scope of this essay, but I would refer the reader to Clark’s The Nude where a full disquisition can be found on pages 13 to 25 and indeed in the chapters beyond.
[viii] Eaves, M. p. 28.
[ix] Ibid. p.29.
[x] Myrone, M. (ed) Seen in My Visions – A descriptive catalogue of pictures by William Blake London Tate Publishing 2009 pp. 84-5.
[xi] Gombrich, E. Symbolic Images Studies in the art of the Renaissance London Phaidon Press 1972 p 124
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