The Blasphemer c. 1800

Curator: Oh, the shadows in this image—they pulse! It’s William Blake’s "The Blasphemer," held here at the Tate. Editor: I find the stark contrast between the hyper-muscular figure and the drab palette fascinating. It feels like labor and the body under assault. Curator: Exactly! Those stones being raised by the crowd—instruments of labor turned into tools of condemnation. Blake was so good at capturing the body’s emotional landscape. Editor: And the social landscape. The stones themselves would have been quarried, shaped, carried... the everyday transformed into something brutal. Curator: It's a disturbing vision, yet so powerful. Blake saw the divine spark in everything, even in the condemned. Editor: Blake’s medium—watercolor and pen—belies the heaviness of the subject. It makes you wonder about the accessibility of art as protest. Curator: The Blasphemer holds a mirror to our own judgments, doesn’t it? Editor: Yes, and to the often-invisible processes that shape those judgments.