William Blake\'s Relationship to Art

William Blake's Relationship to Art as Langston Hughes' Relationship to Jazz

William Blake and Langston Hughes were two artistic individuals who both created a unique artistic and literary atmosphere during their lives as well as shaped the future of art and music long after their deaths. These two men were both renaissance men, and each in their own way has induced the evolution of their craft. However, both men have also been the subject of religious, political, and social scrutiny, much of which came in the form of the banning of their works. But both men stand as pillars in modern society, representing art in its truest form, and honesty to one's self. Both men also gave vision and illumination to the modes of communication that each chose to speak trough. Both William Blake and Langston Hughes changed the faces of their crafts and contributed to the future of art and music.

William Blake, an Englishman born in the 18th century was underappreciated as an artist in his own time. It wasn't until well after his death that artists and critics began to see the genius in his work. As an artist, Blake was true to himself and his own artistic visions. He was at odds with his own society, which held that Englishmen had to adhere to the laws of the Church of England. He came from a very restrictive social environment, and in many ways, his art was a response to this environment. William Blake's art changed the way that people viewed literature and artistic renderings. He took his own artistic visions and converted them into works on paper to help others see that the world around them was not actually as it seemed. Blake was as much of a spiritual revolutionary as he was a literary or artistic one, and many of his own beliefs were included in his work. During the time period that Blake lived however, the Church of England frowned upon anyone who thought outside of the bounds of their version of Christianity. In this way, Blake had to been rather cryptic in his writings and engravings, which often contained what many considered to be blasphemous ideas and concepts. Blake gave artists in England the power and wisdom to develop their art as free artists, and in this way was a real artistic trailblazer.

Blake's engravings have had a very large influence on the concept of the graphic novel, and he used his own artistic talent to try to force those who were exposed to his art to question their own reality and previously held assumptions about nature, self, and the divine. Langston Hughes, who was alive over 100 years after Blake's death, also changed the face of music and art in a similar way. Hughes was part of the 1920's Harlem Renaissance. This was a reinventing of Black influence and culture within the confines of post restoration American society. Hughes' writings are many, and his influence on Jazz is unmistakable. Hughes developed, through his poetry, an artistic movement and a fresh new view of Black culture. During his lifetime, especially in his youth, Blacks in America were not regularly treated as equals, and Black literature and art went rather unappreciated. Hughes' poems shed new light on the human condition, and, just as Blake had done a century and a half before him, asked readers to question their own closely-held views of society and one's place in it. Hughes, like Blake, was also ridiculed for his views, namely during the McCarthy era when he was called in to defend his viewpoints on society and culture.

Even though Hughes died having been recognized for his contributions to jazz and poetry, much like Blake he went underappreciated until the true meaning and context of his work. Both men contributed to the evolution of ideas and art both within their own lifetimes and afterwards. Hughes helped to define and develop the meter and tone of jazz music through his own poetry and writing. Blake helped to redefine the idea of religious freedom and artistic vision as well as contributing to the field of psychology in his won beliefs about the human mind, which were surprisingly similar to the Carl Jung method of psychological analysis. Historically, each man had to fight his own battles with the society that they lived within. They were both misunderstood by certain elements of society and many historians and artists feel as though they were ahead of their own times. Hughes and Blake both fought through their own versions of oppression. For Hughes it was the racial prejudices and cultural attitudes in 20th century America. For Blake, it was the religious oppression and strict social codes of 18th and 19th century England. Hughes gave jazz music the magnetism and cool that it is now associated with, as well as jazz's ability to bridge racial and social gaps through its descriptive and emotive tones and meter.