Art Travelling: ‘Inside the mind of William Blake’ — Tate Britain, London

Well, he was right about that, at least in respect to himself. He was a superb drawer and took that skill into engraving and then he became an incredible colorist.

Anyway, so I went to the Blake exhibition in London at the Tate Britain museum. Initially, I wasn’t going to go, because I thought “Blake boring” with his obscure personal cosmology and his unreadable poems. Then I kept hearing how good the show was so what could I do but pop to Pimlico and see for myself.

Tate Britain is always a place I am wary of. Its mandate to show “British” art only, means sometimes they are desperate. Eeek. Last time I went I saw an execrable ‘show’ by Mark Leckey, consisting of lousy videos and a pretend motorway underpass that would have been laughed off the stage at a high school play (I know: I was in high school plays).

Don’t get me wrong, the Permanent Collection is amazing and has some of my favourite pictures of all time including Carnation Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargeant and The Death of Major Pierson by John SIngleton Copley. Oops — those artists are both AMERICANS, though they lived in London.

I digress. I went to see Wiliam Blake. He’s such a Londoner. He lived all his life in Soho, for good or ill. Somehow the mucky backalleys of Soho and…