Inspired by Blake festival heads to Oxford

Oxford is ablaze with all things Blake right now. From the brilliant William Blake: Apprentice and Master exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum to the William Blake, Printmaker exhibition at Sanders of Oxford Antique Maps and Prints, to Blackwell’s’ exciting Inspired by Blake festival (a collaboration with the Ashmolean).

Launching this Sunday and continuing until January 31, the Inspired By Blake festival is a celebration and an exploration through exhibitions, events and workshops of how Blake’s extraordinary oeuvre is as relevant today as it ever was.

Echoing William Wordsworth’s thoughts, “...there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott”.

Inspired by Blake is no ordinary festival, celebrating no ordinary man, but a magnificent and visionary painter, poet, thinker and icon. Fittingly then, Blackwell’s eclectic, and somewhat surprising, spectrum of Blake-related events range from poetry readings to printmaking workshops, and from rapping to religion. In short, Blackwell’s has curated a celebration of Blake that has something to offer, intrigue and engage everyone from the academic to the uninitiated infant.

Whilst the overarching aim is to open up the joy and inspiration of William Blake’s work to the world at large, interestingly, the festival’s main focus is the investigation of the effect that physical places and spiritual events had on Blake. This inves-tigation will be carried out through discussion, shared reading, memorisation and recitation. And if that runs the risk of sounding a little dry, what about carrying out the investigation through discussion panels, or knitting, through poetry workshops or children’s crafts? All of the above will be on offer as a means by which to explore, absorb, and contextualise Blake's extraordinary, and at times disquieting, genius.

Additionally, Blackwell’s is hosting an exhibition of Blake prints by printmaker and curator (of William Blake: Apprentice & Master) Michael Phillips in their coffee shop.

Having recreated Blake’s relief-etched copper plates that disappeared in the nineteenth century Phillips uses these plates to print impressions by hand on old papers using historic pigments mixed to match the coloured inks that Blake used. Offering a fresh insight into Blake’s practice, the impressions that Phillips produces compare with the rare original monochrome impressions that Blake printed and, astonishingly and excitingly, are in many respects indistinguishable from them. Prints, exclusively created for Blackwell’s, from the Songs of Innocence and of Experience and prints from America a Prophecy and Europe a Prophecy are all available to buy.

Offering yet another perspective of Blake’s oeuvre over on the High Street, Sanders of Oxford presents an outstanding collection of engravings by Blake. These engravings offer the opportunity for a close-up inspection of the addictive arduousness behind a process that equipped the artist with a new found freedom and refinement in his innovative printmaking technique.

“Engraving is Eternal work; … I curse & bless Engraving alternately, because it takes so much time & is so untractable, tho’ capable of such beauty & perfection.”

William Blake, 1804.

Oberon, Titania and Puck

While William Blake: Apprentice & Master at the Ashmolean takes an overview of Blake’s entire career, the prints in the exhibition at Sanders were predominantly produced towards the end of Blake’s career and are regarded as his masterpieces of intaglio engraving. On display will be prints from Blake’s The Book of Job, Dante’s Divine Comedy and rare impressions from Thornton’s The Pastorals of Virgil, all of which will be available to purchase.

Philip Pullman, the president of The Blake Society, spoke movingly of the writer and artist as he opened the exhibition at the Ashmolean.

He told his audience: “There was no one like William Blake. There had been no one like him before and there has been no one like him since. He’s unique not only among English poets but among writers and artists from anywhere in the world.

“For me, the most moving thing about contemplating the life of Albion’s strangest genius is the sense of solitary, continuing unrewarded toil. He lived for much of his later life in conditions approaching poverty, depending on commissions to make drawings to accompany other people’s work, some of it of doubtful merit. But he never betrayed his own vision. There’s an integrity in his life and work that commands the deepest respect. And the splendour of his greatest works in word or line is unmatched.”

Through the incredible arts resources we have here in Oxford, art and literature will collide over the next fortnight in an explosion of Blake’s beauty and perfection spearheaded by Blackwell’s’ inspired Inspired by Blake Festival.

Inspired by Blake festival
January 18-31 
For tickets call 01865 333623, or visit the customer service desk at Blackwell’s bookshop