William Blake's printing process [video]

William Blake's printing process [video]
youtube.com

I did post-graduate study of Blake in school, and have one of his engravings tatooed on my leg. There’s some interesting context that the video doesn’t have time for:

He said that his engraving and printing technique was dictated to him in a dream by his dead brother Robert. It is, as the video says, without precedent and immensely time-consuming.

He printed almost entirely in orange, not the black that the video showed. Orange was his favorite color. The light printing also enabled him to paint over the printings, something he did before selling each work.

He made and sold very few copies in his lifetime. He printed only about 50 copies of his most popular work, “Songs of Innocence and Experience.” His largest work, Jerusalem, has only five copies with only “Copy E” being fully colored.

Very few of his engraved plates still exist. He was poor and copper was expensive, so after printing he would often melt his plates to make new works.

You can see all of this in a single plate, the 4rd sheet of Jerusalem — http://www.blakearchive.org/copy/jerusalem.e?descId=jerusale...

Imagine engraving that tiny cursive by hand, and reversed. The work he put into what he did was astounding.

I mean, there are no shortage of similar examples from Van Gogh to Tesla, but Christ... Our species really needs to get its shit together.

Now, Blake wasn’t destitute. He and his wife had a good life. He had friends and patrons and customers. He made most of his money engraving and illustrating other people’s work. E.g., Edward Young’s Night-Thoughts — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-Thoughts. Blake didn’t make much money from it, but today the poem is mostly remembered because of his engravings.

Once we invented capital, we used to do this with patronage — the artist had to please their patron. More civilized cultures IMO do this with public support for the arts. Almost any major city has a library supported by tax dollars, public sculpture and artwork likewise. Amongst richer societies, I believe the USA does this less well than many. It’s difficult for it not to turn political, or for groups not to get up-in-arms because the public art doesn’t pay sufficient homage to their diety of choice.

But yes, as I’ve said before, we’re more than rich enough as a society to pay any artist to do whatever crazy thing they fucking want to, and we’d all be better for it.