Uwagi na marginesach „Dzieł” sir Joshuy Reynoldsa: Williama Blake’a spor z Reynoldsem o sztukę

William Blake’s annotations to the first volume of “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds” prove an excellent and at the same time fascinating source of knowledge about his views on art. They depict Blake as a rebel against the established rules in English artistic life of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The poet identifies their origin in the beliefs and artistic policies of the first President of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds. This article, a commentary to the translated version (in the same volume) of “Annotations”, at its core primarily attempts to highlight theoretical and artistic issues, but does not shy away from biographical, social and political topics necessary to an understanding of Blake’s artistic and personal views. Relations between the two adversaries, strained ever since Blake’s studies at the Royal Academy in the first half of the 1780s, took on a mythical character of enmity after Reynolds’ death. Blake was the first to criticize the highly regarded Seven Discourses on Art by Reynolds, where - not always fairly – he saw proof of theoretical contradictions and the decline of art. The clash between Reynolds’ aesthetic rationalism and empiricism and Blake’s mysticism precluded the possibility of agreement. All this does not mean, however, that the dispute between Blake and Reynolds was free of paradoxes and ambiguities and that his mind was completely detached from the academicism and classicism of official English art. On the contrary. This article tries to show that, like any radical rebel, Blake largely belonged to the world from which he tried to break away, that his art grew out of 18th-century categories and can best be understood as such.