On view at the Getty Center from October 17, 2023, through January 14, 2024, this is the first major international loan exhibition of Blake’s work on the West Coast.
Now celebrated as one of the greatest artists of the early Romantic era, Blake was largely unrecognized during his lifetime and lived mostly in obscurity. William Blake: Visionary follows his journey as an artist, from his early years as a commercial printmaker to the legendary creator we know today, exploring Blake’s wild imagination through some of the acclaimed works that have perplexed and delighted audiences for over 200 years.
“Our long-awaited William Blake exhibition was originally slated to open in 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are excited to finally showcase an iconic selection of Blake’s otherworldly creations assembled in this exhibition for our visitors,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “Radical, fantastical, and unforgettable, Blake’s works will make visitors feel they have been transported to another world.”
The exhibition begins by illustrating how Blake first honed his technical skills as a printmaker in London—his main source of income throughout his career. Eager to establish himself as an independent artist, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Arts in 1779 but never achieved success. While audiences preferred literal renderings of beloved texts, Blake opted for more imaginative interpretations of his sources. And, while oil painting was considered the highest art, Blake chose to work in tempera, watercolor, and through printmaking.
In the 1790s, Blake started receiving commissions to design and engrave some of his own compositions. In 1793, he proudly claimed to have invented a new printmaking technique of relief etching which allowed him to effectively combine poetry and image together on a single page. He began exclusively publishing his own illustrated poetry, which he referred to as “illuminated books.” Pages from his most celebrated illuminated books, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, are featured in the exhibition, including one of his best-known verses, The Tyger.
Blake often represented figures from the Bible and classical Greek and Roman mythology, along with allegorical characters from his own imagined universe that personified a myriad of emotions, behaviors, and concepts. A few invented figures that appear in his work include “Albion,” who generally represents England and fallen humankind, “Urizen” who often depicts tyranny and oppression, and “Orc” who embodies defiance and revolution.
“Blake employed innovative graphic techniques to combine poetry and images, often using his own highly allegorical characters to respond to the historic events of the time in a veiled manner,” says Edina Adam, assistant curator at the Getty Museum. “By employing his mythology to comment on revolutions, wars, political and economic repression, and social unrest, he was cleverly able to avoid persecution.”
The exhibition displays one of the finest colored copies of Blake’s illuminated book, America a Prophecy, which retells the story of the American Revolution. Views of the American Revolution differed greatly among the British: some considered it a rebellion while others, including Blake, deemed it justified opposition to tyrannical rule—a viewpoint that would have resulted in persecution if not for his use of invented characters.
Later in his career, Blake enjoyed the patronage of a small group of well-off, educated individuals. His most significant patron was the civil servant Thomas Butts, who allowed Blake to retain his artistic freedom while producing over 80 Biblical watercolors for him. Possibly intended as illustrated inserts for a large Bible, five pages from this series are featured in the exhibition, including The Death of a Virgin.
While the Bible was an endless source of inspiration for Blake’s work, his views on religion were complex and at times contradictory. He disagreed with the idea of God as an omnipotent patriarch or vengeful deity. Rather, he identified as a spiritualist and claimed to have experienced frequent visions. Blake’s best-known tempera work, The Ghost of a Flea, is the result of a séance-like vision. It has not been exhibited outside the U.K. for decades and will appear in the Getty exhibition alongside a key preliminary sketch.
“William Blake’s deep spirituality, questioning nature, and vivid imagination particularly resonated with poets and musicians of the 1960s and 1970s such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Bob Dylan. Yet Blake’s work continues to pop up in many unexpected places too, and it feels eternally relevant,” says Julian Brooks, senior curator of drawings at the Getty Museum. “We hope visitors who enter his visionary world through this exhibition will leave feeling empowered to explore the boundaries of what can be imagined.”
Complementing the exhibition is an augmented reality experience, United Visions, created by Australian artists Tin&Ed and available for free download in the App Store. The Getty Center will also host a free lecture, William Blake and India, on Sunday, November 12, 2023 and London Fog Meets LA Smog: William Blake and David Axelrod on January 14, 2024.
Organized by the Getty Museum in cooperation with Tate, William Blake: Visionary was curated by Edina Adam, assistant curator of drawings at the Getty Museum and Julian Brooks, senior curator of drawings at the Getty Museum. Adam and Brooks also co-authored William Blake: Visionary, the richly illustrated accompanying book published by Getty Publications, featuring an essay by Matthew Hargraves.