IMAGINATIVE ART

British Museum
Compositions from the Works Days and Theogony of Hesiod
Modesty and Justice returning to heaven
Engraved by William Blake after John Flaxman

At the age of ten Blake enrolled in drawing school. At the age of thirteen he began his apprenticeship as an engraver. At twenty-two he completed his apprenticeship and began study at the Royal Academy Schools. He was well prepared to earn his living as a professional engraver which he did for the rest of his life. He is remembered, however, for his poetry, his illuminated books and his philosophical and psychological insights. His craft of engraving allowed him to express his creative intellect in ways worthy of his talent. 

Blake had the gift of seeing beyond the natural world perceived by the senses -  a characteristic which was not unique although unusual if not cultivated. But his ability to communicate what he saw in words and pictures, has not often been duplicated. It is no wonder that he was not recognized by his contemporaries when he presented visions of a world they could not apprehend. If generations following his develop a level of consciousness adequate to apprehend beyond the limits of materiality, they will find a treasure trove in Blake's work to expand the dimensions of their world. 

Kathleen Raine saw that Blake as well as other poets and artists had a 'perception of the infinite' although they were out of favor with the dominant culture. They are preserving the essential knowledge, held in trust since ancient times, which will allow humanity to be transformed into a full, clear and true reflection of the Divine in whose image man is created.    
From Defending Ancient Springs by Kathleen Raine, Page 160:

"Demotic art ('paint the warts') dwells upon the blemishes the eye sees; imaginative art reflects 'the true man', 'To which all lineaments tend and seek with love and sympathy', as Blake said. Imaginative poetry alone has a real function to perform; for the pseudo-arts of realism perform no function beyond the endless reporting of the physical world; which quantitative science (whose proper function it is) can do very much better. But true poetry has the power of transforming consciousness itself by holding before us icons, images of forms only partially and superficially realized in 'ordinary life'."

Page 165
"Blake had read Plotinus on the Beautiful, and seems to be echoing his very images when he answers those critics who objected to his representation of spiritual essences with real bodies that they would do well to consider that the Venus, the Minerva, the Jupiter and the Apollo, which they admire in Greek statues are all of the representations of spiritual existences, of gods immortal to the mortal and perishing organs of sight. And yet they are embodied and organized in solid marble. Plato, Plotinus and all who have followed their doctrine have known that to copy from a mental form, an idea, is to come nearer to perfection than to copy nature; which is itself only a reflection, image or imprint of an anterior pattern. The artist must look to the original not the copy."

---

Jerusalem, Plate 38 [41], (E 184)

"Then Los grew furious raging: Why stand we here trembling around
Calling on God for help; and not ourselves in whom God dwells
Stretching a hand to save the falling Man: are we not Four
Beholding Albion upon the Precipice ready to fall into Non-Entity:
Seeing these Heavens & Hells conglobing in the Void. Heavens over Hells
Brooding in holy hypocritic lust, drinking the cries of pain 
From howling victims of Law: building Heavens Twenty-seven-fold.
Swelld & bloated General Forms, repugnant to the Divine-
Humanity, who is the Only General and Universal Form         
To which all Lineaments tend & seek with love & sympathy
All broad & general principles belong to benevolence
Who protects minute particulars, every one in their own identity."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 531)
"No man can believe that either Homer's Mythology, or Ovid's,
were the production of Greece, or of Latium; neither will any one
believe, that the Greek statues, as they are called, were
the invention of Greek Artists; perhaps the Torso is the only
original work remaining; all the rest are evidently copies,
though fine ones, from greater works of the Asiatic Patriarchs.
The Greek Muses are daughters of Mnemosyne, or Memory, and not of
Inspiration or Imagination, therefore not authors of such sublime
conceptions.  Those wonderful originals seen in my visions, were
some of them one hundred feet in height; some were painted as
pictures, and some carved as basso relievos, and some as groupes
of statues, all containing mythological and recondite meaning,
where more is meant than meets the eye."

Public Address, PAGE 59, (E 574)
     "Men think they can Copy Nature as Correctly  as I copy 
Imagination this they will find Impossible. & all the Copies or
Pretended Copiers
of Nature from Rembrat to Reynolds Prove that Nature becomes
tame to its Victim nothing but Blots & Blurs.  Why are
Copiers of Nature Incorrect while Copiers of Imagination are
Correct this is manifest to all"

Public Address, (E 578) 
"Countrymen Countrymen do not suffer yourselves to be disgracd

The English Artist may be assured that he is doing an injury
& injustice to his Country while he studies & imitates the
Effects of Nature.  England will never rival Italy while we
servilely copy. what the Wise Italians Rafael & Michael Angelo
scorned nay abhorred as Vasari tells us

     Call that the Public Voice which is their Error
     Like as a Monkey peeping in a Mirror
     Admires all his colours brown & warm
     And never once percieves his ugly form

What kind of Intellects must he have who sees only the Colours of
things & not the Forms of Things" 

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 544)  
"It will be necessary for the Painter to say
something concerning his ideas of Beauty, Strength and Ugliness.
  The Beauty that is annexed and appended to folly, is a
lamentable accident and error of the mortal and perishing life;
it does but seldom happen; but with this unnatural mixture the
sublime Artist can have nothing to do; it is fit for the
burlesque.  The Beauty proper for sublime art, is lineaments, or
forms and features that are capable of being the receptacles of
intellect; accordingly the Painter has given in his beautiful
man, his own idea of intellectual Beauty.  The face and limbs
that deviates or alters least, from infancy to old age, is the
face and limbs of greatest Beauty and perfection."

Annotations to Reynolds, (E 648)
 "Knowledge of Ideal Beauty. is Not to be Acquired It is Born
with us Innate Ideas. are in Every Man Born with him. they are
truly Himself.  The Man who says that we have No Innate Ideas
must be a Fool & Knave.  Having No Con-Science or Innate
Science" 

Annotations to Reynolds, (E 541)
"The connoisseurs and artists who have made objections to
Mr. B.'s mode of representing spirits with real bodies, would do
well to consider that the Venus, the Minerva, the Jupiter, the
Apollo, which they admire in Greek statues, are all of them
representations of spiritual existences of God's immortal, to
the mortal perishing organ of sight; and yet they are embodied
and organized in solid marble.  Mr. B. requires the same latitude
and all is well.  The Prophets describe what they saw in Vision
as real and existing men whom they saw with their imaginative and
immortal organs; the Apostles the same; the clearer the organ the
more distinct the object.  A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the 
modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a
nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all
that the mortal and perishing nature can produce.  He who does
not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger
and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see does not
imagine at all.  The painter of this work asserts that all his
imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more
minutely organized than any thing seen by his
mortal eye.  Spirits are organized men:"