William Blake's style is a highly imaginative and visionary Romanticism that defies easy categorization. It's marked by:
Illuminated Printing: Blake uniquely combined text and image in his own engravings, creating vibrant, hand-colored pages.
Symbolic Imagery: His works are filled with personal and biblical symbols, often representing abstract concepts like good and evil, reason and imagination. Think angels, demons, mythological figures, and natural elements like fire and water.
Emphasis on Imagination: Blake championed imagination as a superior faculty to reason and empiricism. His art and poetry celebrate the power of creative vision and spiritual insight.
Social Criticism: He was critical of institutionalized religion, industrialization, and societal constraints on individual freedom.
Bold, Expressive Lines: His figures are often muscular and dynamic, rendered with strong, swirling lines that convey intense emotion.
Key Themes:
Remembering Blake's style: Think of "BLake's Imaginative Kingdom Embraces" to quickly recall his style's focus on Lines, Imagination, Kingdoms (both earthly and heavenly), and Engravings.
