The “Saving Power” of Modern Art: Art and Technology in William Blake’s Prophetic Works
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One of the common aspects of British Romanticism assumed by scholars is its apparent opposition to the technological changes that had been sweeping over England since the mid-eighteenth century. Romantic writers, on the one hand, bitterly criticized the cultural and material conditions that modern technology created for the (re)production of art. On the other hand, however, they were acutely aware of, what Greenberg calls as the “fundamental ironies,” of their criticism since both the role and the notion of art and artists they promoted were essentially tied to how they dealt with the question of the material medium, the printed book, in and through which they were to communicate themselves with contemporary readers. By examining William Blake’s multifaceted images of Urizenic figures in his prophetic works, this study attempts to identify the ways in which Blake deliberately uses the very logic of modern technology in order to explore the double visions of modern art. This paper argues that Blake’s criticism of modern technology is in fact his artistic probing of the “saving power” of modern art that is inherent within the nature of modern technology. The double nature of Urizenic images in Blake’s visual and verbal texts analogously shows the very process that the “danger” of modern technology transforms itself into the “saving power.” Blake’s insight into the material condition of his time stems from his awareness of this double vision of modern technology, through which he envisions an artist’s new furnace to forge the new “saving power” of modern art.
Abstract
One of the common aspects of British Romanticism assumed by scholars is its apparent opposition to the technological changes that had been sweeping over England since the mid-eighteenth century. Romantic writers, on the one hand, bitterly criticized the cultural and material conditions that modern technology created for the (re)production of art. On the other hand, however, they were acutely aware of, what Greenberg calls as the “fundamental ironies,” of their criticism since both the role and the notion of art and artists they promoted were essentially tied to how they dealt with the question of the material medium, the printed book, in and through which they were to communicate themselves with contemporary readers. By examining William Blake’s multifaceted images of Urizenic figures in his prophetic works, this study attempts to identify the ways in which Blake deliberately uses the very logic of modern technology in order to explore the double visions of modern art. This paper argues that Blake’s criticism of modern technology is in fact his artistic probing of the “saving power” of modern art that is inherent within the nature of modern technology. The double nature of Urizenic images in Blake’s visual and verbal texts analogously shows the very process that the “danger” of modern technology transforms itself into the “saving power.” Blake’s insight into the material condition of his time stems from his awareness of this double vision of modern technology, through which he envisions an artist’s new furnace to forge the new “saving power” of modern art.
참고문헌 (22)
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