William Blake and the Age of Aquarius

Abstract

In September 2017, the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern opened an exhibition dedicated to exploring the impact of William Blake on the counterculture of the ‘long 1960s’. Entitled ‘William Blake and the Age of Aquarius’, the exhibition brought together more than 130 paintings, prints, drawings, films and posters from the time, as well as Blake’s prints and illuminated books from various North American collections. The catalogue of the same name, edited by Stephen Eisenman, comprises seven essays examining Blake’s role as prophet of the counterculture or viewing him as a proto-countercultural figure in the England of the 1790s. As the catalogue, William Blake and the Age of Aquarius (Figure 1), represents a significant addition to the studies of Blake’s reception, several contributors to this volume have provided their differing perspectives, below, on the potential role that the book may have in determining our understanding of Blake’s effect on the counterculture.