Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Blake Lecture on February 28

Date: Sunday, February 28, 2010
Time: 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Location: 99 Sutton St. (American Cork Building #204) Greenpoint, Brooklyn



As part of a new series of readings/events at Eric Gelsinger's house, Douglas Manson will offer a discussion of William Blake's visual works followed by a presentation of some of his poetry.

Blake is cool because he’s a workshop for the mind of his readers, whether they be thinkers, poets or painters. His many works in text, book publication and design provide a generous supply of ideas for re-thinking artistic practice and performance. He came to full maturity in the midst of multiple revolutions, the results of which many would claim created our present social ideal of harmony as an enlightenment inheritance. Blake’s work questions these assumptions at the level of art and poetry. The present lecture will focus on his art: the style, techniques and themes of engravings and books in which he intertwined language and visual design. I will be using two American examples as a comparison to the kinds of attention viewers and readers have given Blake in recent decades: the poetry of Gertrude Stein, and the stories and graphic work found in science fiction and fantasy titles published by Marvel Comics from the early 1970s to the early 1980s.

Douglas Manson is a freelance academic, writer and micropublisher. In 2004 he took a Ph.D. from U.Buffalo, and soon after started little scratch pad press and Celery Flute: The Kenneth Patchen Newsletter. He adjuncts when his rice supply is getting low. Otherwise, he likes to make raucous music, fly kites and argue about contemporary definitions of good love with his friends in Brooklyn. Additional contributions from Claire Epstein, Jay Cohen and Sharon Mashihi.

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