William Blake and the Age of Aquarius

Book - 2017

A stunningly illustrated look at how Blake's radical vision influenced artists of the Beat generation and 1960s counterculture In his own lifetime, William Blake (1757-1827) was a relatively unknown nonconventional artist with a strong political bent. William Blake and the Age of Aquarius is a beautifully illustrated look at how, some two hundred years after his birth, the antiestablishment values embodied in Blake's art and poetry became a model for artists of the American counterculture. This book provides new insights into the politics and protests of Blake's own lifetime, and the generation of artists who revived and reimagined his work in the mid-1940s through 1970, or what might be called the 'long sixties.' C...ontributors explore Blake's outsider status in Georgian England and how his individualistic vision spoke to members of the Beat Generation, hippies, radical poets and writers, and other voices of the counterculture.0Among the artists, musicians, and writers who looked to Blake were such diverse figures as Diane Arbus, Jay DeFeo, the Doors, Sam Francis, Allen Ginsberg, Jess, Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, Charles Seliger, Maurice Sendak, Robert Smithson, Clyfford Still, and many others.00Exhibition: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois, United States (23.09.2017 - 11.03.2018).

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Subjects
Genres
Exhibition catalogs
Published
Princeton, New Jersey : [Place of publication not identified] : Princeton University Press 2017.
Language
English
Other Authors
Stephen Eisenman (-), Mark Christopher Crosby, 1972-
Item Description
"Co-published by the Block Museum of Art and Princeton University Press."
Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, September 23, 2017-March 11, 2018.
"Published in conjunction with the exhibition William Blake and the Age of Aquarius ' -- title page verso."
Physical Description
xi, 232 pages : color illustrations ; 26 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780691175256
  • Director's foreword / Lisa G. Corrin
  • Acknowledgments / Corinne Granof
  • William Blake and the Age of Aquarius / Stephen F. Eisenman
  • Prophets, madmen, and millenarians / Mark Crosby
  • William Blake on the West Coast / Elizabeth Ferrell
  • William Blake and art against surveillance / Jacob Henry Leveton
  • Building Golgonooza in the Age of Aquarius / John P. Murphy
  • Sendak, Blake, and the image of childhood / Mark Crosby
  • Blake now and then / W.J.T. Mitchell.
Review by Library Journal Review

Although barely known in his lifetime, William Blake (1757-1827) became a cult hero in the 1950s as poet, artist, visionary, and antiestablishment iconoclast. His work has resonated with artists as diverse as Jimi Hendrix and the Doors, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, photographer Diane -Arbus, and children's author/illustrator Maurice -Sendak. This book is companion to the exhibition at the Block Museum of Art (Northwestern Univ.) and draws on collections from that institution as well as rare materials from the Rosenbach (Philadelphia) and the Yale Center for British Art. Curator and author Eisenman, (art history, Northwestern Univ.) has written a thoroughly referenced overview of Blake's biography and work. Seven contributing scholars focus on topics such as Blake's uptake by hippies in 1967's Summer of Love. The work's many illustrations demonstrate the wide influence of Blake's use of both image and text, from the abstract expressionists' employment of color field to the themes in Sendak's picture books to psychedelic concert posters. VERDICT A scholar's exploration of artistic connections between American artists and the eccentric Blake.-Nancy B. Turner, Temple Univ. Lib., Philadelphia © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.