Unclassifiable Artists
Using William Blake (aka “the patron saint of unclassifiable artists”) as an example, Evan Puschak’s latest video explores how society often rejects artists whose work doesn’t fit neatly into established categories and frameworks of criticism and commerce.
What you’re seeing here, these are not paintings. They’re prints of engravings from Blake’s illuminated books, which he designed, wrote, etched, colored, and printed himself using a technique that he invented. These extraordinary books are works of art that mix and synthesize categories. And as a result, the art world of the late 17 and early 1800s didn’t really know what to make of them. And Blake never sold more than a handful.
Comments 1
I love Blake's art and poetry. "The Tyger" is like a philosophical gut punch if you think about it.
Also, we have a stack of postcards called The Art Box, published by Phaidon in 1998. The art is on the front and the back has the artist's name and the year when it painted.
We play a game with our kids where you draw three random cards and have to put them in order from oldest to newest.
It can be very easy (Mona Lisa, American Gothic, Keith Haring). It can also be difficult (three different Dutch masters only a few decades apart).
But the most interesting thing was that if a kid drew the Blake card in a set of three, he was ALWAYS assumed to be more modern than he actually was!
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