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William Blake 1757-1827
English poet, painter and engraver
A pioneer of Romanticism, William Blake's illustrated epic and lyrical poems have become art treasures. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, two of his greatest works, were 'published' in his own unique style of 'illuminated printing': each page was printed from an engraved plate containing both text and illustration, then coloured with watercolour, giving the pages a fragile yet vibrant beauty. In additional to his lyrical poems, Blake wrote several major epics, including Milton and Jerusalem.
Blake was also a visionary and mystic: as a child he claimed to have seen angels in the unlikely setting of Peckham Rye. He elaborated a complex philosophical system in his 'Prophetic Books', revealing deep spiritual uncertainties. Although his work was appreciated in literary circles, his other-worldliness led many of his contemporaries to see him as mad, and during his lifetime, his work was largely ignored. He died at the age of 70 and is buried in an unmarked grave.
Find out more …
The William Blake Archive
www.blakearchive.org/
Complete poetry and prose archive, with visual art by Blake and contemporaries plus bibliographic information.
William Blake: Chambers of the imagination by Peter Ackroyd, Marilyn Butler, Robin Hamlyn and Michael Philips (Tate Gallery Publishing, 2000) £29.99.
Blake's vision, personal mythology, political context and idiosyncratic techniques.
Francisco Jose de Goya 1746-1828
Spanish artist
One of Spain's greatest painters, Goya is also one of its most controversial. His output was extraordinary — he painted more than 1,800 works — but the tone and style of his work changed radically over the course of his life.
His artistic career began at the Spanish court where he painted light-hearted cartoons of contemporary life at the royal palace. However, some of this work, which ruthlessly satirised society, foreshadowed the darker period that was to come.
The turning point in Goya's life is thought to have been his serious illness in 1792, which left him permanently deaf. His caricatures cut closer to the bone: Los caprichos, a series of etchings, attacked political, social and religious abuses. Because some of the characters within the works were recognisable, the etchings had to be withdrawn from sale. Although he had been appointed court painter, his royal portraits were harsh and unflattering.
It was during the Napoleonic Wars that Goya produced his blackest work. Los desastres de la guerra, another series of etchings, unflinchingly depicted the brutality of war. Paintings produced at the end of his life, such as the horrific Saturn Devouring His Son (which Goya hung in his dining room), suggested to some that Goya had succumbed to madness.
Find out more …
Francisco de Goya on the Internet
www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/goya_francisco_de.html
Part of the Artcylopedia search engine, with links to Goya’s work in museums world-wide, plus related biographical information and the background to specific paintings.
Goyaby Sarah Symmons (Phaidon Press, 1998) £12.95.
Goya in the context of his Spanish heritage, the influences on his work and relevance of his art in modern times.
Sylvia Plath 1932-63
American poet and novelist
Sylvia Plath's early life was that of a brilliant and wholesome American girl. She had her first poem published at the age of eight, the same year her father died. She won several literary contests while at school, and her success continued at Smith College, to which she won a scholarship, and where she won a magazine fiction contest.
Plath's precocious accomplishments and popularity masked her severe depression. At the age of 20, she suffered a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide and was hospitalised in a psychiatric hospital. The Bell Jar, her second novel, is a semi-autobiographical account of these events.
Despite Plath's illness, she graduated with honours from Smith and won a Fulbright fellowship to Cambridge. There she met the poet Ted Hughes, whom she married in 1956. The couple had two children, but the marriage broke down.
In the later years of her life, Plath's work became increasingly confessional. She wrote at great speed and without restraint, imbuing her poetry with an incisive wit as well as darkness. Her later poems, published in the collection Ariel, are widely regarded as her finest work. Soon after the breakdown of her marriage, at the end of a period of intense artistic productivity, Plath committed suicide by gassing herself.
Find out more …
The Sylvia Plath Forum
www.sylviaplathforum.com/
Online discussion, photographic archives, bibliography, plus audio clips and links.
The Other Sylvia Plath by Tracy Brain (Longman, 2001) £16.99.
Investigates how Hughes and Plath drafted poems together, looks at her home-made art scrapbooks and analyses the marketing of her work.
Dom Joly 1967-
British comedian
Dom Joly is the brains behind Trigger Happy TV, the Channel 4 comedy show featuring the man with the outsize mobile and the fighting dogs. After only two series, it is already part of the national consciousness.
Joly has an unlikely background for a comedian, apart from the fact that he is manic-depressive, which seems almost de rigeur for a 21st-century comic. He worked as a runner for MTV, as a trainee diplomat, as a journalist for ITN and then as a writer for the Mark Thomas Product.
His ITN job provided the first glimpse of Trigger Happy. So bored was he carrying out political interviews that, instead of doing straight question-and-answer sessions, he arranged — unbeknown to his interviewees or the rest of his crew — for odd things to happen. Thus Paddy Ashdown, then Liberal Democrat leader, was once attacked by clowns on the green in front of the Palace of Westminster.
Joly describes what he does as 'controlled madness'. He believes, however, that there is not enough madness out there: 'Madness has become something people really fear. So we have an inordinate amount of drugs just to control madness ... Trying to dampen and keep a lid down on any sort of weird thoughts.'
Find out more …
Trigger Happy TV
www.triggerhappytv.com
Features Dom Jolly’s site with streamed video clips from Trigger Happy TV.
For more from Dom Joly, see his interview