Blake's
Workshop
Joseph
Viscomi *
“Mechanical
Excellence is the Only Vehicle of Genius”
Allow
me to take the easy way out of this “chain prophecy” by predicting three things
in the future of Blake studies which are interrelated and which I think we can
all agree are inevitable: 1) more of Blake’s art work will be made available to
us through reproductions; 2) there will be more critical comment about Blake’s
illuminated books from linguistic philosophers and art historians, as well as
from literary scholars, and 3) the scholarship of Blake scholarship will become
increasingly unwieldy.
Now,
all this activity is good news if you think aesthetic experience is based on
one’s relation to the work of art as well as to the experience of that work by
others, which is to say, on the entire linguistic context in which the art work
and one’s response belongs. On the other hand, if you think that art is
“addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, and but mediately
to the Understanding or Reason,” [1] or that “it is impossible
for the Understanding to comprehend Beauty,” [2] then
what we will do to Blake has diminishing returns. The more a work of art becomes
an
object of criticism, the less it is an object of intuition.
Nevertheless, whatever your definition of the aesthetic object or experience,
one thing is certain: before there can be any kind of aesthetic or critical
response, the work of art has to first come into being. This is true whether
you identify the aesthetic object with the work of art itself, or locate it in
the spectator’s mind, or in the interaction between the spectator and artifact,
or in the artist’s mind, or think that the whole question about aesthetic
objects is based on linguistic ambiguity in aesthetic discourse. And besides
there having to be a work of art before there can be an experience of it, one
other thing is certain: the conditions under which the art work comes into
being shape what the work is and means.
Under
what conditions did Blake’s works come to be? We have actually come a long way
in answering this question in that we now know better than to think of Blake as
a “naive genius” working in a vacuum. We need, of course, still “more work that
tells us just how Blake fits into his time,” but that he was “part of his
social and intellectual climate” has, fortunately, become an article of faith,
at least among literary critics. Yet, analyzing Blake’s art within the context
of 18th-century culture, which admittedly makes good theoretical sense, will
not tell us what Blake’s “pictorial art is all about,” nor will “more
conversation across the academic disciplines” of literary criticism and art
history, which admittedly is necessary before we can develop a “language that
will deal effectively with Blake’s art.” We will never fully understand how
Blake’s art came to be if this conversation continues to exclude voices able to
speak the language studied, i.e., the language of art, and specifically the
language inherent in the media Blake used, and if the context remains only
social and intellectual and continues to exclude the workshop. Essick’s advice
to “the methodological sophisticates [to] stay in close contact with
traditional historical scholarship” applies here: art and literary critics
should stay in contact with artists, for the artist’s point of view can provide
a “crucial anchor for critical speculations.” If we do not include the workshop
and artist in our conversations about Blake’s art, I think we will continue to
remark: “This is not what pictorial art is all about.”
It
is not that craft and technical matters are de-emphasized in critical analysis;
they are simply ignored altogether. It does seem that one’s answer to the
question “how does art come to be?” depends on the side of the easel one stands
on. Perceiving art as the act of translating preconceived ideas or images into
a given medium prevents one from realizing what artists acknowledge
intuitively: that processes and materials play a significant role in defining
the very nature of works of art. To perceive art as the act of translating
ideas is to perceive media as simply an obstacle or mediating vehicle artists
must deal with in order to express their ideas and visions. The critical
question is: Where did the idea come
from. Answer that and you’ll know how the work came to be. Never mind that the
art work literally comes from the workshop, and that Blake knew that work
brings inspiration and vision, that “Execution is the Chariot of Genius,” [3] never
mind that Blake thought that “people [who] say give me the ideas, it is no matter
what Words you put them into” and those who “say give me the design,
it is no matter for the execution . . . know enough of Artifice but Nothing of
Art.” [4]
This attitude
toward the messy business of making art is manifest in our thinking that Blake
is less concerned about the quality of the marks made than what the marks mean,
or as Blake and his contemporaries would have put it, less concerned about
execution and more about invention. Aren’t we treating Blake as a “naive
genius” when we think the lines aren’t quite right, but that’s okay, the mind
is in the right place? For the sake of the vision as a whole, poorly
proportioned parts are justified, overlooked, or excused; the issue of bad art
is sidestepped altogether. But no matter how literary and symbolic a painting
is, visual art is not prose. The idea that the subject does not determine the
meaning of a painting is, of course, anything but new, but giving it anything
but lip service in Blake studies would be. And critics will continue to
subordinate form to content not only because of an inability to understand the
meaning of form, but also because of an eagerness to excuse or explain sloppy
work—and, yes, many of the illuminated prints were pulled and colored
carelessly and uncaringly. On the other hand, there are books like Urizen, copy F, Marriage, copies I and H, Songs, copies Y and Z, Europe, copy C, and many others whose visual splendor reveal a love and
intensity which can only be realized when artist and craftsman—and thinker—are
perfectly united. It must be admitted and remembered that without such a union
there would be no cause for seriously studying Blake as an artist in the first place.
A related but distinct
opinion that also results from thinking of Blake more as a poet-philosopher and
less as an artist is that he was overly
concerned with each and every mark made, that the “minute particulars” of
swirl, leaf, and bird—not to mention the direction of Los’s big toe—is
overwrought with symbolic significance. Reading in this light, one critic even
interprets the ink splatters in the background of Jerusalem prints as intentional mistakes made to remind the reader
of the mechanical process behind the book. Acknowledging that process affects
product is the right idea, but this is an overzealous interpretation,
especially since Blake can never be accused of belonging to the “crystal
goblet” school of printing. His books always show traces of the process.
Indeed, it is snakes, birds, and other interlinear decorations that most
clearly reveal the printing process, or rather, Blake thinking in terms of the
process, of knowing that what he does during the execution of the plate-image
will affect and be affected by what he does in later stages. Filling out a line
of poetry and breaking up space with decorations makes good technical sense
because a tightly composed design is easier to etch and ink: it does not have
to be bitten as long and deeply as one with open areas, and it keeps the ink
dabber on the surface, thereby decreasing the likelihood of ink being deposited
in the shallows—unintentionally. Breaking tip space also creates, of course, a
visual arrangement of marks and space on the page, an arrangement that can move
the eye of the reader or fix it on a certain word or image, in addition to
being pleasing in itself. This is not to say that pictograms and other
decorations in illuminated books are not significant, but only that marks on
any given plate may function as part of the composition, or as part of the
relief line system, and not necessarily, or only, as symbols from the Kabala.
The
point here is that if we are going to treat Blake’s illuminated books seriously
as art, then we cannot excuse poor work because we are more concerned with ideas,
nor can we read all marks as hieroglyphics. There are many reasons why
something is the way it is in the illuminated books, why something is added, or
deleted, or changed, looks good or bad. Aesthetic and technical considerations,
and not just ideas, should be given more attention since they play a more
important role in compositional decisions than is generally acknowledged.
The
formula that Blake “had intense ideas and a peculiar imagination which he
wanted to express” [5] should not blind us to the fact
that ideas and forms—both visual and poetic—do not exist separately or causally,
as
is implied by the syntax: first there is
an idea and imagination, then there is its expression. To think that they do
is
to fail to understand that in bringing forth the artifact there is a dialogue
between the artist and the medium in which the artist both creates and receives
impressions, and, even more importantly, that this dialogue is already taking
place in the mind of the artist before anything touches the paper or canvas.
This is why the means of expression is part of the idea expressed.
Perhaps
if the two dominant ways of viewing art, i.e., as a means of expressing and
communicating ideas, that is to say, symbolically, and as formal design, that
is to say, objectively, were not seen as mutually exclusive (like cultural
and technical contexts), we would not feel so obliged to place Blake in only
the
former camp and read his visual art like poetry and prose. These two views
form a continuum of ideal types; artists, however, are real people and Blake,
as a
real artist, must have existed somewhere in between these ideals, recognizing
in the artifact both its symbolic and objective realities. This syllogism may
be simplistic, but I do feel very strongly that Blake knew that whatever else
art communicates, it must communicate itself to succeed as art. Literally and
metaphysically the image is the idea,
and the artifact must be experienced, and not just be about an experience,
if it is going to qualify as an “improvement of sensual enjoyment” [6] and
be experienced by the senses, “the chief inlets of [the] Soul.” [7] It
is the combination of
formal organization and communication, and not just the combination of poetry
and illustration, which makes the illuminated books composite art.
Analyzing
the poetry, art, and aesthetics in the context of the physical and metaphysical
workshop is, admittedly, more difficult than most other kinds of analyses. What
little has been done to date is of dubious value, mostly because the attempt to
acquire an approach as interdisciplinary as Blake’s has relied on “conversation
across . . . academic disciplines”
only. I would like to agree with Essick about art historians being able to
discern the importance of “formal and stylistic considerations,” but it has
been my experience that too many tend to distrust people who get their hands
dirty and that they seem, as Adams has pointed out, to be “deeply mired in
assumptions that don’t allow for Blake’s existence.” They are just as prone as
literary critics to read art as icon rather than as graphia. And when it comes
to the illuminated books, they are no better informed than literary critics
about the literature pertaining to the graphic arts, the diversity within
18th-century graphic arts, and the aesthetic context in which Blake’s relief
etchings properly belong.
So,
if a literary or art critic does not already know the arts of printing and
painting—knowing in the sense an artist knows, which is, I suppose, analogous
to knowing Young, Blair, and Ossian as an 18th-century poet knew them—the
critic is not likely to understand in any great detail terms and practices no
longer used, nor be able to see how the historical record reflects the thinking
of artists, a kind of thinking we see manifested in Blake’s art and ideas about
art. There seems to be, then, something of a “catch 22” preventing our entering
the workshop and obtaining Blake’s point of view regarding his pictorial art.
One needs to already know the processes to fully understand the historical
record, but without scholarly research into 18th-century practices one cannot
completely know the processes. But the paradox is only apparent. It is not a
question of one person having to synthesize all these things well, but rather
of critics, scholars, and artists acknowledging that the conditions that shaped
and brought forth Blake’s art are technical as well as intellectual and social,
and that all of these conditions should be taken into account when studying the
art, the aesthetics, and the man.
It makes good theoretical
and practical sense, then, to think of the workshop as an integral part of the
cultural context in which we place Blake and his art. The art materials and
methods that he used and the vocational literature of his day form a
significant part of the cultural and psychological context out of which evolved
Blake’s art, his ideas on art, and his conception of himself as an artist. By
knowing this particular technical matrix, we can begin to examine the effect
that Blake’s work as a printer and painter had not only on the language and
imagery in the composite art, but also on his aesthetics and his idea of self.
By knowing the cultural associations as well as the details of the processes,
we will also begin to recognize verbal and visual allusions to technique that
have been overlooked, misread, or whose significance has been underestimated.
It is my belief, at any rate, that studio work combined with historical
research is a kind of investigation that should be encouraged and taken more
seriously; it will help us to understand what Blake borrowed, altered,
rejected, and invented in practice and theory, and to appreciate more fully
Blake’s pictorial art as art.