UNPLEASANTLY SANE & MYSTICALLY MAD | Madame Pickwick Art Blog.
“William Blake is an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement….the proor man fancies himself a great master, and has painted a few wretched pictures, some of which are intelligible allegory, others an attempt at sober character by caricature representation, and the whole “blotted and blurred”, and very badly drawn. These he calls an Exhibition, of which he has published a Catalogue, or rather farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness, and egregious vanity, the wild effusions of a distempered brain. ” ( The Examiner, 1808 )
Long before our time, William Blake ( 1757-1827 ) believed that Christianity was a revolutionary faith and poetry a radical art, and that the poet’s duty was to speak for the slave, the captive, and the poor. Yesterday’s lunacy has a disconcerting way of becoming today’s wisdom; more than 200 years have passed since the unsigned review above appeared and in the meanwhile William Blake’s wild effusions have acquired an almost Biblical authority. Had he been a Catholic, he might have been canonized by now
read more…
Irina | Swoon | Show & Tell Gallery | Toronto Contemporary Art Gallery.
I think I need to return to printmaking…
JR owns the biggest art gallery in the world. He exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not the museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit.
After he found a camera in the Paris subway, he did a tour of European Street Art, tracking the people who communicate messages via the walls. Then, he started to work on the vertical limits, watching the people and the passage of life from the forbidden undergrounds and roofs of the capital.