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William Blake<\/a>\u2019s drawings, paintings, prints and illustrations are heavenly, cosmic, spiritual, mind-expanding and consciousness-raising. What they aren\u2019t is large. The Yale Center for British Art<\/a>, still flushed with excitement over its recent renovation and reopening, is displaying dozens of the artist\/poet\u2019s works in the new exhibit \u201cWilliam Blake: Burning Bright,\u201d which is up through the end of November.<\/p>\n Despite the extraordinary artistry and larger-than-life themes, a Blake exhibit is seldom overwhelming. These are physically small works, many of them intended for small books. They don\u2019t jump from the walls or command your attention. You have to walk right up close to them.<\/p>\n The YCBA has cunningly spread the Blake art \u2014 much of it from the museum\u2019s own collection \u2014 delicately and elegantly. The most enchanting arrangement is a bank of pedestals where the cover pages from a series of Blake book projects resonate from upright freestanding glass frames.<\/p>\n Studying these artfully displayed artworks (mere browsing is simply not possible here) you can see how Blake, who lived from 1757 to 1827 and was the living embodiment of the phrase \u201cahead of his time,\u201d influenced generations of British and American illustrators and book designers. He is able to make distant worlds seem accessible, the heavens touchable, gods human. There\u2019s everything from a classical \u201cvirgin and child\u201d biblical image to an amusing cartoon titled \u201cI Want! I Want!\u201d of a guy trying to climb a really long ladder up to the moon.<\/p>\n \u201cWilliam Blake: Burning Bright,\u201d the first major exhibit of works by Blake at the YCBA in nearly three decades, has fittingly inspired its own new book bursting with Blake\u2019s brilliance. \u201cBlake,\u201d a gorgeous 136-page hardcover volume published by the YCBA and distributed by Yale University Press, is written by Elizabeth Wyckoff, the curator of prints and drawings at the museum as well as the curator of the exhibit.<\/p>\n The exhibit also features the analytical essay \u201cThe Infernal Prism: Blake\u2019s Colors Unbound\u201d by Sarah T. Weston, assistant professor of English and of art history and archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. A sample Weston insight: \u201cBlake, who so frequently married \u2018contraries\u2019 in his poetry 9innocence\/experience, heaven\/hell), may have been intrigued by opposing colors jarring against each other in our eye and on the surface of his page.\u201d<\/p>\n Wyckoff\u2019s book divides Blake\u2019s work into sections of \u201cDrawings, Watercolors and Tempera Paintings,\u201d the \u201cInfernal Method\u201d the artist used to control how the text and illustration got etched together onto the page, \u201cCommercial Engravings and Illustrations,\u201d \u201cBlake\u2019s Original Illustrations,\u201d the etchings from Blake\u2019s book \u201cJerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion\u201d and his \u201cLate Engravings.\u201d<\/p>\n Since Wyckoff\u2019s book is more on a scale with the size of the original works, it is a terrific complement to the gallery show, allowing an opportunity to study these works in detail and at the reader\u2019s leisure. He can be as funny\/creepy as Edward Gorey with works like \u201cOde on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes\u201d or the scratchy huddled-up skeleton etching from his \u201cFirst Book of Urizon.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether due to his innovative concepts and designs, his divine sense of color and texture or simply the compelling subject matter \u2013 just try to blithely flip the two-spread in the book that features \u201cThe Whirlwind of Lovers\u201d and \u201cThe Baffled Devils Fighting\u201d \u2013 Blake draws you in.<\/p>\n