William Blake: The Red-Flag Dragon!!!!

Please enjoy this ringback tone while your podcast is reached. This is Raquel and Chelsea, and you're listening to Baroque Bitches. Brack, what do you think the worst part about being an artist is? Business. Even though we are businesswomen, it sucks. Right, the website, the marketing, the selling of the stuff. Ew, I don't want to do that. However, there's a pretty cool platform called Art Storefronts. Oh my god, do you mean the ultimate website builder, marketing tool, and art selling platform designed specifically for art bitches?

Oh yeah, not only that, but they also have a supportive community of over 15,000 artists, and you can be one of them. One of us. One of us. And hello, the holidays are coming up. Get that cash, art bitches. And Art Storefronts will actually throw in their build and optimize your site add-on service totally free when you mention the Baroque Bitches podcast at sign-up. Um, that's like an $1,800 service. Right? Check out artstorefronts.com, the all-in-one solution for growing your art or photography business. Welcome to Baroque Bitches. Your art history as a podcast. I'm Chelsea. I'm Raquel. And we're gonna get into a big one today.

I am so excited. Oh my god, he's so perfect for having- Is William Blake, like, such a slut? Or am I just, like, maybe- Okay, we'll get into it. He's got- He's got it. It's all in his head, really. It's all going on in his head, really. I mean, good for him. So this has been an artist that I've been obsessed with since a very fun, very fucked up movie. It's actually a book, and then it turns into a movie, whatever. Ralph Fiennes. Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes. Fiennes. Hot villain guy.

Hot villain, creepy, sadistic, totally juicy hot icon, plays a twisted serial killer slash love interest in the Silence of the Lambs prequel, Red Dragon. Red Dragon. That movie just, like, messed me up. It was so confusing. Do I love Ralph Fiennes, or do I hate Ralph Fiennes? I like him. Do I love Anthony Hopkins, or do I hate Anthony Hopkins? Oh, I like Anthony Hopkins. It's like, it's so tough. I'm so morally conflicted. He is also obsessed with our boy today. So much so that he gets a giant tattoo of our boy's artwork in the movie. On his back. Yeah. It's good.

Iconic back scene of Ralph Fiennes' back. Oh, she can't see it. She's blind. She can't see it. She can't see it. So this one is good, especially if you're a photographer. There's definitely, like, hot darkroom stuff happening. I always wanted that in photography class. I was hoping I was going to get a hot darkroom scene. Why isn't somebody coming up from behind and just making out with my neck? I was, like, way too frustrated in the darkroom. Yeah, you feel, like, sexy. I was yelling. I was not cute in there. Photo process is not for you. It's not for me. Not for me.

Not for me. It is a good one, though, for Halloween, so get into it. Yeah, that's true. Yes. And today, I'm doing my costume today. Oh, my God. I'm going to be here. Last minute mama. Last minute eyeball. Last minute eyeball. I have all the things. I just haven't put it together yet. So I, like, realized today, I'm like, my jellyfish costume is falling apart because, you know, I got, like, those, it's like that Mylar paper backdrop thing. Like the shiny paper. Yeah. And it's just, like, breaking off left and right. And it's pouring down rain, freezing outside. So, well, we will persevere. Yeah.

That'll be the theme of tonight's trick or treat. You'll figure it out. You'll figure it out. Or you could go as the fisherman, maybe, or something. Or, like, wear a fisherman. Or wear, like, a sailor-looking thing. I don't know. Something nautical-looking. I don't get too much into my jellyfish costume. You gotta do jellyfish. You gotta do jellyfish. Speaking of Halloween, it's our Baroque bitch-iversary. It's so many important dates for you because it's your wedding anniversary. It's my anniversary. It's the BB anniversary. We're going to the Queen Mary, so I'll let you guys know about that if I see any hauntings.

We're definitely looking for ghosts, obviously. And, like, also getting drunk and stuff. And, yeah, we'll hopefully be eyeballs that, yes, tomorrow. You got this. Hopefully we'll be eyeballs. Hopefully we'll be eyeballs. My sweet kitten. I'm sorry. They always have to, like, be by me when I'm doing anything. They love you. So if you have cats, you know. As soon as you said, we're fine. They were sleeping. They were totally fine. And now they're all over me. I bet you Willie and Blake likes cats. Or liked cats. Oh, I bet. So we might as well get into it. We might as well visualize.

I worked really hard on this. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. Because I have a little poem in the style of our boy today. Oh, my God. How cute. Yeah. So let's visualize. Let's visualize. The sun sinks into the black abyss while I try to sneak in one last kiss. Say goodbye to the world we knew, for darkness lurks in the shadows of blue. Screams begin as the world opens. Then a thunderous roar. The dragon has woken. Oh, behemoth of burning nights. Demolishes any last speck of light. There's no hope for the remaining specters. As I ponder, how will all this affect her?

We run, knowing that the end is near, for the monster feeds on fear. Where will we go when time is done? No more moon and no more sun. No more love. No more fun. No more God. For evil has won. What? Ah! What? It is so scary. Ah! Which brings us to our gossip topic, William Blake, the great red flag dragon. Oh, my God. Ah! Ah! Ah! Oh, hello there, you beautiful creatures of the night. Looks like you have an insatiable lust for the Baroque Bitches podcast and are dying to eat our brains. Well, you're in luck.

Get a lot more of our juicy brains during Spookfest happening now on Patreon. From haunted museums to cursed objects, ghost stories, behind the screams content, and more. Become one of us. One of us. By going to patreon.com slash baroquebpodcast or clicking the link on our website, baroquebpodcast.com or clicking the link on our Instagram at baroque.b.podcast. Thank you for your undying support. We couldn't do any of this spooky stuff without you. We love you to death. Yes, more rapture lore. Okay, we've talked about rapture talk a little bit in our Patreon. I've gone down the hole. The rapture rabbit hole.

Yep, you know about my obsession with the rapture and rapture talk, which is not rapture talk, but like rapture TikTok. And if you aren't chronically online like I am, the rapture is a thing again. And now it's on TikTok. Every few years, people with religious psychosis think Jesus is coming to take the faithful to heaven. And even though in fucking Matthew, it says only God will know the day, you guys. Like it says it in your book that you love so much. And yes, September 23rd or 24th has passed already. And unfortunately, all of us got left behind.

And our boy today would have ate all this shit right up. So we might as well get into it. A-S-H. Sex. Location. Who are you? Where are you? How old are you? What's going on? What's going on with you? What's your Zodiac sign? We need to know. We need to know. William Blake. Yeah, no middle name. Just William Blake. Was born November 28th, 1757 in Gaulian, London, England. and that makes him the sexiest son of the Zoniac Sagittarius. Yay, another Sag. We love a Sag. You're unhinged. We ponder. We're questioning everything around us. What is life? What is art? What is love? We're super emotional.

Remember a fire sign? We're ruled by Jupiter. We'll tell you exactly what we're thinking, even if it hurts. But if you tell us that same shit, we'll cry. Look out. We'll cry. How dare you? How dare you? So our sensitive, fiery artist poet, William, is a perfect Sag. Now, before we get into our boy, let's get into this girl, London. London. You sound like you're from London. Sorry. We've talked about London. It's haunted the whole place. Londoners, give us your ghost stories. We know you have them. And he's not only living in London, he's living in Soho. Ooh, today. Cute. Trendy. It's so cute.

Today, Soho is a cute, quirky, hella gay, artsy town where all the cool kids hang. The name actually comes from, okay, this is weird. The name comes from a 16th century hunting cry, Soho. It's kind of like Jolly Ho kind of vibes. Okay. Because Soho began as an open farmland for hunting. Then, it went through, she went through a lot of changes, Soho. Then in 1530, King Henry VIII, who totally, we have to talk about him, used it as a royal park. He's like, this is all mine now. And then later, sold it to wealthy developers to create housing for nobility.

So it's where all the fancy people lived. And then a century later, those houses were sold to wealthy tradesmen. And the tradesmen set up shop in the area. Got it. So then it became like a cool shopping town. Okay. Yes. And now you can buy a house in Soho for about a clean million. Or more. Must be nice. Yeah. You think it's like probably like 5 million now? There are houses in Soho for 5 million. They start, I looked it up. Because I'm like, wait, I want to live here. I looked it up. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty pricey. It can be pretty pricey.

But like an average house is like a, maybe a little under a million. Okay. That's not as bad as I like would think. It's not terrible. I mean, that's. Are we talking pounds? Are we talking US dollars? We're talking. I mean, I kind of did the math a little bit. For, for pounds, for English pounds. But yeah, it's pretty much like, you want to live there? You got to spend about a million dollars. And in the 17th century, Soho did have a similar vibe as it does today. But think less cute coffee shops and more artisan workshops and more political upheaval. Okay.

Well, maybe like kind of the same amount of political upheaval. The people are talking. And the people are talking revolution. While the God-fearing pearl-clutching sheeple were against the revolution and all the blood violence and beheadings, the bohemian artist crowd in London were definitely liking with the Frenchies and even their enemies, the Americans, were doing with this whole revolution thing. They were interested in this power to people. What is power to the people? What does that mean? Oh, let's fuck it up. Yeah. Let's fuck it up. Actually, we have the power. And our boy loved slash hated living in London.

He said it was only in London that he could, quote, carry on his visionary studies, sea visions, dreams, dreams. Yeah. He was able to find his weird people in Soho and do shit like write poems and paint freaky illustrations. And nobody thinks, well, a lot of people thought it was weird, but he was able to do it. A lot of people thought it was really weird, but he was able to do it. It's kind of like living in San Francisco. We lived in San Francisco for a few years. You could totally freak the fuck out, get naked, roll around the street.

And it's totally what else. And it's just a Tuesday. Nobody's going to even look at you or talk to you or anything about it. I love that. Oh, we're having problems. Okay. Okay. But he hated it for the same reasons that you could hate living in San Francisco too. Seeing people in desperate poverty and being oppressed and misery and death everywhere. That's city living. It's super fun and inspiring, but the other half of the time, it's like really sad and scary. Well, and it's like, if you can't control yourself. Yeah. Yeah. It can be hard and very unproductive.

There's of course those differences there that, you know, we have addiction, crazy, more addictions and all that stuff. But let's get back to the fam. Yeah, yeah. These guys were pretty weird too. They're pretty weird. And I totally get where William gets his like stuff from mom. Mom. Mom. Mom was Catherine Wright and she was interesting. She was a mother of seven fucking kids. Oh, wow. Five of them did make it. The fucking water slide. Yeah, water slide. She's popping them out and only five of them did make it. Oh, damn. Damn, mom. She was also very religious.

And we think she considered herself a Moravian Christian. Okay. Which is a sect of Christianity that's big on having like a really emotional relationship with Christ. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah, they're like a little more whimsical and like mythical about it. It's giving like new age, but still Christian kind of a thing. Like she was there. She's there with the crystals. Like she gets it. We're there. And Kathy definitely believed in angels and demons, not in like a metaphorical or allegorical type of dreamy way, but that they're real and that we deal with them on the daily. So mom's like stressed.

Mom might be a little stressed. She's also like seeing and actively talking to angels and demons and stuff on the daily. And so that's where that's where William is growing up in that. Yeah, the art is making sense. Mythical beings are coming in our lives all the time and we're interacting with them all the time. So mom's kind of cool and weird and obviously a huge influence on William and his work. Sure. And dad, dad's pretty fucking weird too. And like a less, okay, it's a different way. So dad is James Blake and he was a hosier. Okay. So he just makes hosiery? Yeah.

He sold stockings and other like knitwear and gloves and little sucky things from his shop. Sucky things. Little sucky things in a shop at the ground floor of their home in Soho. So he loves dad. He's cute. He was said to be pretty friendly and gentle and supportive of William's artwork. So even though he did kind of want him to get in the hosiery business, he had other kids that got into the hosiery business. So we're like, he's like, okay, maybe you're not the one that's going to like take on the stockings. You can do art. That's fine. So cute. We do like the fam.

And we can't move on without mentioning William's favorite sibling, Robert. He was four years younger than William and they had a deeply spiritual relationship and would later collaborate from beyond when Robert died. So yeah, Robert died and William would actively talk to him. So there's a lot of like the spirits of your loved ones are all around you at all times. And yeah, this will be kind of like a theme for him. He had a few significant childhood experiences that shaped his whole vibe on like religion and art. When he was four, he claimed to see God.

Quote, I saw God and he put his head to the window. Okay. Okay. Now, he's trying to see the sun. Yeah. William never said what God looked like. He just says that he sensed the presence. Okay. But we will see his depictions of God later on. It's like hot sand. Right, right, right. Right. And that's not the only spiritual childhood experience. At nine, he saw a tree filled with angels while on a walk in the country. He said, quote, a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars. Okay.

So he's really saying this is not him saying I have a great imagination. I'm artsy. Like I see things. No, he's like, no, literally, I saw a bunch of angels with sparkling wings and stuff like up there. Damn. So he's the modern day medium. He's not normal. He's not normal. Obviously, he's an art kid and his parents being pretty cool sent him to art school when he was 10. He was like, you got to do this. You got to do this thing. You're crazy. He went to Henry Parr's drawing school where he trained in the classics, drawing plaster casts and learning anatomy and stuff.

His dad would buy him prints by Durr, whose episode is coming soon, so don't freak out, and Michelangelo. And this made him fall in love with Renaissance art, which you can totally see the influence. He loved the intensity and mythology and wars with the devil and all that jazz. He wants drama. He wants angels and dragons and heroes and princesses, like stuff weirdo kids, like weirdo art kids, like metal kids. He's totally metal kid. And William was good at this shit, so much so that his work caught the attention of James Bazir, who was a highly respected engraver.

The difference between engraver and printmaker, you must be asking. Obviously. Obviously, that's what you're asking right now. What's an engraver? To me, the engraver does the fun part. You can just carve a design in a copper plate, and then the engraver is not always the guy that actually prints the plate. You can hire a weirdo printmaker to do all the process shit. They like it. I don't know why. I love it. It's fun. I don't have the answers on why printmakers are weird. They just aren't. It's facts. So engraver dude James makes maps and stuff, and he does some really pretty landscapes too.

He is actually a pretty big deal because he was a member of the Worshipful Company of Stationers. Okay. So this is- Tell me more. This is anything to do with like books, publishers, libraries, scribes, engravers, illuminators. Anything to do with like words on paper and publication and stuff. Sure. You got to go through these guys. Okay. And they were actually the first guys to enforce copyright law, so they're kind of cool, but sometimes they're bad because they can also enforce censorship. I'm like, we don't like what you're saying. We're not going to- Too much power. Yeah. No, pay with the people metaphorically, right?

But our boy is in with the cool works on paper crowd now. One of his first assignments was to sketch the tombs and monuments at Westminster Abbey. So you can check out one of my favorites from these drawings, Countess Aveline's Tomb by William Blake. This is totally showing off his precision and skill. So his work was not always like wavy like that. Wavy and loopy and spirally like that. He totally understood the classics. He knew that he had to pay his dues and draw crips and stuff. And you can see where this type of work starts to mold your mind.

You can just imagine drawing this. He's not in he's not using a reference or copying another drawing. His teacher sent him to the Abbey surrounded by statues of angels and kings and saints and drama. He's totally in his elements in this bitch. He's totally like Abbey drawing this stuff. He's totally happy drawing this stuff because he's surrounded by his like future characters really. Yeah. He was James's apprentice for seven years and then he enrolled in the Royal Academy under Sir Jocelyn Reynolds. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Reynolds makes an appearance again. He makes an appearance again. You guys remember Reynolds.

We talked about him in our Henry Fusili episode. He's cool but he's tradish but open to new ideas kind of vibe. And William and Henry Henry Fusili were actually friends at the Academy. they went to school together. Oh cute. Okay. I like that. Now Henry he was a bit more established than William at the time. At this point he's lecturing at the school and at the time William enrolled he would be listening to his lectures and they were both actually inspired by each other's work. So they like totally get each other. They were cute.

William actually engraved some of Henry's designs and Henry would fiercely defend William when people started calling him crazy at school. Oh fuck. Yeah. I mean even even Henry was like kind of an outsider at the school. Like he's definitely not tradish but Reynolds was like listen this guy has ideas. He's got this. Like he can lecture even though it's against me basically. But yeah William was a little more into Henry was very sociable and like very able to like talk to people and William can talk to people but he's in his another fucking world. So you have to have the right people around him.

He really needs the right people around him because people are getting like is this guy crazy? Is this guy fucking I mean what's going on with you Will? You good? Are you okay? So in school at the very traditional Royal Academy now our boy was fully trained in traditional art techniques so he was at this point he was excited to start getting more like philosophical and conceptual and romantic. he would speak openly about his prophecies and his visions and how he wanted to I'm not hiding anymore. This is who I am.

Yeah of like okay you're really trying to you're you're throwing that net out and trying to find your people and he wanted to translate his angels and demons into art which in today's art school landscape totally can't bring it on today. but back then people totally didn't get it again yeah one of his classmates reportedly saying there was no doubt that this poor man was mad so yeah another one calling him diseased and wild yeah you're being mean you're being mean he just wants to talk about angels dude you're being mean so we had while he had henry fusilli defending him william hated reynolds the guy the president guy okay remember when henry felt conflicted with reynolds is idealized beauty yes well william like really double down on that okay he called reynolds a hypocrite and accused him of trying to depress art by stripping it of imagination damn okay some real threats there he said quote this man was hired by the satans for the depression of art of like you really don't like henry was like chill with him like he's like we have conflicting ideas but i think we can vibe but william was like fuck your ideas fuck your ideas that's not what art is dude no no no no no yeah this tension between reynolds and william only push our boy further into the outskirts further into like being rebellious sure but we love that yeah of like we needed that but it's gonna be a whole lifelong thing pretty much of this stuff he's not backing down he's not getting nicer about his visions nor should well okay go nuts lean into it lean into it you're at art school but no there's still like tradition annoying oh my god tradition in 1780 he showed his first piece a watercolor called the death of earl godwin earl godwin was an important political figure in the 11th century england and his sudden death that was probably a heart attack kind of turned into this whole lore about him later it was written that he choked on a piece of bread while professing his innocence because he was accused of killing this guy it's like a god vengeance kind of thing like i'm innocent you eat something god coming in and intervening it's like in basketball they say the ball don't lie it's the same thing there you go don't fucking lie you're gonna choke on some bread exactly yeah and this boy william is probably maybe he's hoping for the same fate for sir reynolds so like he's petty he's petty he's petty and nobody got it nobody gets it it was messy and raw and so unlike the other works in the exhibition i could already hear them being like this is an underpainting this isn't finished like this is really too much too much craziness going on here what's wrong with you dude you're already saying weird shit now your art is totally weird it was overlooked nobody knew that this was the beginning of something huge for william and for art and illustration as we know it right so yeah he's basically like dismissed please go please leave so after school he's freelancing he's engraving he's illustrating he's frustrated because he's not having too much creative control in this so he's working things out in the stude and then he met a girl who is she well he met a girl after meeting another girl oh here's here's the tea so this is kind of funny so he met this chick polly wood and he fell hard for her i guess she was like really cute and bubbly they dated for a short while and he ended up accusing her of like seeing other dudes and she was like yeah dude it's not that deep do you see me i'm so cute but it was that deep for him so yeah she basically rejected him because he was too jelly yeah and later he said of that relationship quote cured me of my jealousy oh oh women don't like that women really don't like that nobody likes that he learned that yeah nobody nobody wants to be that jealous it's annoying i'm also i'm also look at me i'm so cute i'm dating other guys yeah but like i'm not being weird about it like dude come on so yeah he was too jelly so he went to battersea which at the time was like countryside kind of vibes okay he needed to like leave for a minute i'm totally get i totally get it if i'm feeling weird you just gotta go and just gotta go doesn't matter where just go just go get out of here get out of here yeah free your mind and in battersea he met another girl okay okay okay he's figuring it out he's figuring it out he met katherine bocher because he noticed that because she noticed that he looked sad she like went up to him and was like why are you sad why are you so sad so the conversation went like this kathy i pit or william i have been very unhappy i was jilted and kathy saying oh i i pity you and then he says then i love you that's their holy little love story thing oh my god that's like i don't know how to feel about it like really like okay you like that i just want your dad sir what like and a year later they were married so okay whatever katherine was from a pretty poor family her dad was a gardener who sold at like farmers markets and stuff and there's not much more written about her family she was also illiterate so william actually taught her how to read and write and how to engrave and make prints and shit oh cool she totally helps him in the stude they're cute like we really like katherine she puts up with his stuff which we will get into right now william blake stuff what's the deal what is your deal why are people saying you're wild and diseased because he absolutely rejected everything oh i thought you were gonna say because he's wild and diseased because he's wild and diseased no he's cool he rejected everything to do with conventional society sure from organized religion to the royal family to his moral objection to slavery to his support of sexual liberation to define gender roles and even the way he made art was controversial like you could not fit this guy into a box he's a sag he might seem insane he might be insane but he's on to something he's on to something before we get into all of his very progressive ideals let's get into what he's making at this point and how his work for others made him shake up the relationship between writer and illustrator okay so remember he's out of school he's freelancing he's collaborating with writers like mary wolstencraft mary shelley's mom yeah yeah yeah yeah what she needs an episode like the more i read about more the more i fall in love with this bitch she seems so cool she wrote a book called original stories from real life illustrated by her boy and you can tell by these illustrations that william sympathized with mary's feminist ideals the book is a story about two girls in their journey into emotional maturity it's about being brave and finding independence and understanding that you are not just for men and william's illustrations were sincere and human and like he shows the girls as protagonists right not decorations or love interests or anchors for a male protagonist just young people having an adventure through life and finding their identities right y'all don't see us as people sometimes and it shows it really shows we're not just decoration we're not decorations sorry but william got it we got a feminist on our hands and he doesn't care who knows it yeah definitely one of the reasons he was considered wild and diseased yeah because we hate women I mean we still don't like women and while he was doing great collaborating with these influential revolutionary writers he wanted more control sorry my phone he wanted more control he was questioning everything around him societal influences even God he was also questioning the writer illustrator relationship all together why does the artist illustrate the pages but they have no say in what part of the book it's printed or how it looks with the words he wasn't feeling the lack of control that an illustrator has when it comes to putting everything together so that's what he did he put everything together so our boy invented a printmaking technique called illuminated printing so this was influenced by illuminated manuscript from the dark ages those like funky old bibles with fully armed monkeys coming out of like some guy's ass and then they're playing the harp or something like it's fun it's fun I like these guys are crazy illuminated printing combined text and image and he did this by writing directly onto a copper plate using a mix of varnish and ink then he etched the plates using acid which corrodes the background leaving a relief of the text and images basically the reverse of tradish and talio etching so he's like you know what let me flip this whole fucking thing on his head right now so he called this process quote printing in the infernal method by corrosives which in hell are salutary and medicinal he says okay he's got a lot of feelings he's got so he's sad she's got a lot of feelings oh my god this guy and then he would hand color each copy with watercolor and katherine would totally help all with all of this so you can check out the project that he was able to have full control over finally the marriage of heaven and hell this was a satirical counter response to the christian mystic and philosopher emmanuel swedenberg's heaven and hell so another guy wrote a book about heaven and hell and he was like nah i'm gonna make fun of it with my book about heaven and hell like he's just okay okay i love it so here's the tea william liked emmanuel's concepts at first they both claimed to have seen god and angels he was similar with all the woo woo stuff william even attended some of his meetings and totally vibed with emmanuel's divine insight i'm like you're weird i'm weird we're seeing angels like finally somebody that gets it but eventually he would reject emmanuel's teachings specifically when it came to biblical hierarchies like emmanuel was you know he was christian he had all these rules around good and evil and imagined this strict class system based on your sins like angels in heaven have some sick competition for it's just like so wild to me that you can be so confident in something you absolutely do not definitively know totally totally i don't know if you guys watch secret lives of mormon wives but that's the theme if you don't you should they seem to always be competing for like who's more mormon yeah even though none of them would be considered mormon by real mormons not like it's something that you want to be it's a total scam but y'all are you you guys are fucked up on laughing gas but coffee's bad okay so have you heard of soaking that's my favorite no so i guess okay so here's a tea so i guess in school they have they all go to byu which is like yeah bring in a university it's getting all famous on tiktok of like what are these fucking people this is your college this is the craziest college and and you know interviewing people that go to byu and saying things like oh yeah because sex before marriage is bad so we're gonna do this thing so we're gonna we're gonna get two people that like each other together the guy is gonna stick his wiener in you and we're gonna have a friend jump on the bed so you guys aren't actually doing the friction somebody else is involved with the friction so instead of just having premarital normal sex now you have several people involved while you're getting penetrated jumping on the bed so you guys could feel something that's wild and that good I love mormons that's some freaky stuff and I totally want a swig in california too do you know what swig is no it's their soda thing so okay okay listen so before we get back into our boy I gotta talk about swig so swig is like a soda shop because they don't do booze or coffee or anything Starbucks or anything so they go to swig and get a giant soda like filled with like syrups and all kinds of they do all these different like recipes for different like a dirty dr pepper with cream and like the other venerals and whatever and yeah they're and people are fucking addicted to it they're totally addicted to this the sugar you know when I worked with a mormon I had a mormon boss at chuckie cheese and he wouldn't drink any soda because it had caffeine that's what I thought it was against the law for mormons I mean I'm sure like most things there's like ever you know to each their own queen bees of the loop it just depends on whether or not you're part of like lds or not well that's that's the whole theme of it is like are you are you really mormon if you don't wear the underwear or are you really mormon if you don't get married in the temple and do all these horrible little like weird fucking things of like yeah I don't know enough about it but I have watched sister wives but yeah sister wives iconic love it and then of course I watch real housewives of salt lake city so iconic okay anyway anyway William played more to the tune of you gotta have like a little god and a little little bubble to feel balanced he famously said quote opposition is true friendship so you gotta have a little conflict to develop like that's the whole point sure sure yeah try to get through the shit and you'll be better off and that's why he named his counter response to Emmanuel's book heaven and hell the marriage of heaven and hell because you need a little bow that's like a yin-yang yeah China gets it centuries before this shit we're so behind but William gets it but of course nobody else got it one reader said god damn these are like so bad one reader said quote there was no doubt that this poor man was mad and that quote it is a mixture of insanity and genius so they're like are you crazed or do you know something that we don't know so they might actually be intrigued like it sounds like they actually are intrigued by it people are always afraid of anything that's disruptive yeah they're still scared of it like you're crazy so not only is William questioning organized religion and basically evil is good sometimes right so he's illustrating it in a way that is really fucking weird and this is not normal black and white highly detailed and taglio style etchings these are really fluid and like expressive and watercolory yeah it sort of has a like what do you call it like a almost like a Matisse feel or something like the shapes shapes that aren't regular bodies like they're more spirits instead of actual human bodies and the imagery flows through the text so you are experiencing the imagery while reading the text you're not just reading the words you're feeling them he's helping the reader visualize so this book was definitely a turning point he found his funky little niche it takes time gotta love to find you just gotta keep making stuff it'll find you and he's able to publish anything he wants because he's the one who's fucking printing it well him and Kath Kath it seems living in someone else's dress such a good song anyway he found his freedom he can write and draw whatever the fuck he wants regardless of what the normies have to say he's the printer creative fucking control so might as well get into the really weird stuff he wrote America a prophecy so you might think a political opinion piece on the American revolution and the future of the US well not really the American revolution became a mystical battle against tyrannical oppression in his book William uses a fictional allegorical figure named Orc and Orc is the personification of this duality thing he was conceptualizing in his first book Orc is a symbol of rebellion and fights for liberty but if his rebellious nature goes unchecked he can become destructive he is the ultimate protagonist who fights his outer battles while also fighting his inner demons and he'll do like a lot of these kind of books so we cannot get into even like a fraction of his stories I'm picking out a few cool ones including this little number visions of the daughters of Albion this is where we get his feminist sexual liberation stuff of like all that stuff he was learning from what Mary Wollstonecraft right you nasty William but for sure this is a kick-ass piece of feminist literature William you're getting it you're not performative have you seen those performative males why am I talking about TikTok so much on this fucking channel have you seen the performative male stuff I love it I don't I'm not on TikTok I haven't gone down that dirty dark hole yet so there's this performative male thing going around because I guess originally guys are dressing for like the female gays and trying to get girls to talk to them by like drinking matcha and like reading feminist literature like wearing a tote bag is that what we like yeah I think that's what we do though you just look like you work at Trader Joe's and we like that we love that who is the grocer Monet's dad Monet's dad we all just want Monet's a hot grocer so he is not performative male he's got some other stuff going he's getting into the ladies stuff okay this book the protagonist is this gorgeous virgin Uthun she's all hot for this dude Theotormone and he's super into her too and they totally want to fuck but then she gets assaulted by this asshole Bromian yeah literally Bromian and then Bromian chains her to Theotormone the guy that she wanted to fuck in the first place but she was assaulted and no longer a fucking virgin so Theotormone is like nah not into it anymore you're gross now that's rude yeah so poor Uthun who's a victim gets shat on again by the dude she loved and now she has to be chained to him so it's hella traumatic but it's really about fuck the patriarchy fuck predators fuck moral oppression and fuck religion for making it really hard for women to do anything fun yeah and William would agree that the Bible only benefits men and oppresses women especially when it comes to sexual desire and like our bodies yeah yeah yeah the Bible hates female bodies they're so gross we can't let them believe that they're the ones that actually make life not some male god it's dumb it's dumb so bros like bro minion can't let us have anything fun without attacking and or shaming us it's crazy you would think they would like women to be DTF but no you gotta be a virgin you gotta be a virgin and then also like give crazy head and you are so annoying just fuck each other then oh my god there's like an episode in um mad men we're watching we're re-watching mad men right now and joan is so hot right yeah doctor fiance whatever and they're like laying in bed and she's like you're tired like let me do the driving and gets on top and he's like where'd you learn that from like gets all mad and I was just like god you can't like have this hot we can't do anything we can't no we can't be bad in bed and be virgins and terrible at the lay there scared but then you don't like that but then we can't have like actually I might be a little creative I think I can do something fun here you can oh where'd you learn that like I'm not creative get the fuck out of here get the fuck each other then go date each other so annoying and William William totally gets this shit he's totally pissed off for us so like he's in our circle now he's totally in the feminist circle now of like wait wait wait you guys are oppressed all the time yeah it sucks it'd be cool if we weren't we would be more fun if we weren't fucking impressed all the time absolutely no you are cool moves and stuff we got moves and it's like come on like not like we don't watch porn and stuff like we know how to like fiddle your thing fucking stupid thing you guys beg us just to touch just touch it oh my god you touch it oh my god I can go on and on oh my god it's so good and it's so true it's true oh my god you guys need to think about this a little bit my face hurts it's just you guys need to think a little bit about that do you want a virgin do you want a slut which one you can't be both you can't have both you can't have both make up your mind oh my god why do you want a fucking virgin anyway whatever anyway anyway anyway this complex mythical characters continue to develop through this series of like these prophetic books so he has all of these books and these characters like show up in other chapters right and later on they even show up in his commissions and stuff so he is like creating his world of people sure and these books are like private prophecies that he's making with Catherine in this dude these are only being shown to a few of his close peeps and a few like poetry nerds like this dude Robert Sothe a poet who made really boring ass shit he called William quote insane and erratic and an unfortunate lunatic like these are not different these are not the same quote you guys these are different people saying this okay William is one of the most important poets and artists in history and Robert who exactly shots fired yeah and really I mean come on Robert you needed to be a little bit more insane and erratic your poems are so boring boring and Catherine was like super into making these crazy books with William he knew that she was totally essential to his creative process he called her his emanation which is like a fancy word for like female other half sure and would call him her and she would call him her spiritual teacher and she totally believed him when he was seeing visions of angels and talking to God and all this stuff yeah so you know all those scary movies where the husband like doesn't believe his wife when she says she's seeing ghosts all over the house right so every time Alex and I watch one of those there's so many of those where the husband doesn't leave the wife and I tell him that he better fucking believe me if I see ghosts in the house but he's more like oh my god are you serious I'm whipping out the Ouija board like we're getting into it like I totally believe you I'm like okay cool so if I start seeing things like at least go go with it just go with it okay just why wouldn't you believe me why wouldn't you believe me benefit of the doubt that makes a successful marriage of like you need to just trust me that like I see ghosts right now okay dude like you gotta feel me and Catherine was like sure I totally feel and she really believed that this guy was some vision which I don't know maybe he he was really into like I see this shit I know this stuff is happening right okay okay sure all right so William and Catherine are doing great with their practice and William is getting all into interpreting his visions and Catherine is stoked to have this guy that sees angels but they're kind of broke William does odd illustration jobs to keep afloat but they're struggling he's trying to figure out like what's due for cash yeah rich guy moments here's the rich guy moments William Haley was a respected author and a rich guy he was really wealthy and liked our boy's work he commissioned him to illustrate his books at one of his cottages near his estate in Feltham which is like the southern coast of England it's really cute little beach town it's cute sure basically come live come live at my beach house and draw like perfect it sounds like it has strings attached to it well there's a couple of things okay what are your rules at first William and Haley were like super chill creatively yeah Haley was the rational one and wanted William to focus on commercial art and like let's make some money first and then you can do your side projects right and William was like totally I should try to I should probably be responsible and like focus and make some money yeah I should I'm spending a lot of time with my side projects that don't make cash so like let me try to make some cash and it's gone they started clashing creatively and William wanted to pursue all of his mystical woo woo stuff I can't help it I can't be in a box stop it I want the woo woo you can't stop my woo woo and William eventually okay William has this insult for like several people he called him the blockhead that was his big one you're a blockhead he called like several people at the academy blockheads do so it's funny blockhead I mean William this dude is giving you like a hella nice house to work in you might have to do some shit you don't want to do so you can tell that William is not only like drama in his books but he's kind of drama as a dude yeah he's drama he just doesn't care and not only that he like has this incident that happens at his house okay like let me tell there's like some weird tea so I guess some soldier dude trespassed on his garden and William got pissed and ran out and grabbed him and like threw him out of his garden and was shouting things like damn the king and stuff like that allegedly allegedly and dude actually reported William for sedition which is like saying something bad about the king and he had to like go to trial for this my god he ended up being acquitted in the end but I guess this event really shook him and he got first hand experience on how fucked like the system is damn now it was actually in the system and it does suck I'm even more disillusioned than I was before right I thought I was disillusioned before now you guys really do suck so they left this cute beach town and went back to London he's like real intense right now after all this craziness with this trial he really just wants to get back to his prophetic work but he knows that he still has to make money so he met another patron not as much of a rich guy but a little bit rich he was okay Thomas butts there's a lot of Thomas's and Catherine's and Williams oh my gosh Thomas was Thomas was totally Williams vibe okay this guy is a little different I'm like trying to figure him out still okay Thomas was a civil servant working as a clerk in the war office like doing military stuff military secretary stuff sure okay he was also extremely devoutly Christian and loved Williams mystical style they actually became close friends so much so that William would send him poems and teach his son how to engrave yeah and Thomas would commission like a ton of work from him and even give him advance payments for commissions if William needed cash like okay military clerk that loves weird paintings of angels and demons you never know I mean you never know who's gonna love your shit you never know you really never do I'm like this guy wasn't in the arts at all but he was really religious and was like I might as well have some of these great religious paintings I mean yeah so Thomas basically wanted William to illustrate the Bible for his private collection and he allowed him to have full creative control so like okay Thomas funny enough that's exactly what William wanted actually that's exactly what I want to do illustrate the Bible perfect so my scene this series of commissions happens to be some of William's most iconic work obviously we're not talking about all the books in the Bible thing it's too long we're just gonna do my favorites like Job book of Job William makes him pretty hot like a hot Santa and Job is chilling praising God Satan wants to play so he asked God if it's okay to test Job's faith because he seems way too chill okay here's the literal conversation in the Bible this one fucks me up Satan from Satan stretch out your hands and strike everything he has and he will surely curse you to your face God very well then everything he has is in your power but on the man himself do not lay a finger like oh that was the devil just asked you if this was okay and you said it was okay it's like okay no big deal go for it the devil does end up touching his body and like getting him sick and stuff so annoying like okay God thanks for protecting me okay but I like literally can't get over how hot Santa this is though oh my god sexy Santa sexy Santa we're getting festive we're getting we're gearing up yes two more days until Christmas decorations depending on who you are William's version is a lot more about Satan being a version of Job himself rather than an external being so Job needed these challenges to develop spiritually and instead of like the God working in mysterious ways thing William's all about the unity of Satan and God and human life on earth okay yeah and these illustrations God and Satan kind of look like different versions of Job right a bunch there's a bunch of hot Santas in this in this illustration like you are God and Satan and that's okay you gotta figure it out that's the fun of it that's the fun of it and eventually in the Bible Job gets his life back except for his kids I guess and in William's version Job is playing music with his family under the sun so is it earth is it another dimension are we all dead I don't know I don't know but they're happy they're happy and this brings us to another commission the moment the legend the icon the moment you have all been waiting for the great red dragon series yes revelation obviously the best book in the Bible in church the revelation days were always the best like give me fire and dragons like yes and is he near oh yeah that's right you went to like catholic school right I didn't go it wasn't specifically catholic but we did like weird catholic things like we took communion and stuff even though we weren't like didn't do confessions and stuff like that it was weird it was weird it was like a non-denominational school so they sprinkled a little catholic in when it was like oh let's do the Jesus cookies let's do the Jesus cookies we like that we like look Jesus cookie it was weird so yeah I do know I have listened to some sermons and the non-boring ones are always the revelation sermons of like fire yes the war of heaven and hell and all that good stuff yeah of course William loves all this yeah he makes four major versions of the great red dragon but we'll focus on the big one the great red dragon and the woman clothed with the sun this is this is the one from the movie yes I'm not gonna lie kind of hot dragon no hot I mean it's very sexual we've got muscles we've got thick ass thighs talking about like hentai situation yeah very veiny wings body yaddy yaddy yaddy and we're looking for it from the back so it's just like a muscular ass winged demon of like gorgeous and this is a little bit about like the sexual the sexual liberation thing too of like that this this is this could be a symbol of the power of like kind of restraint that you have that you need to have for god or something yeah yeah yeah and the terrified woman at the bottom of the frame can be seen as like the soul embodied it's like the devil's coming for your soul kind of thing okay totally his energy drama fire angels divine intervention all of that stuff he likes so you can tell he had a lot of fun with the red dragon series and all his works illustrating the revelation yeah so he's making these fun things for this great patron but he also had to look for other opportunities to make ends meet so he began illustrating the very popular canterbury tales thinking that they might sell like this might be a good idea for a publisher to get these canterbury tales yeah everybody does love the canterbury tales and william imagined the canterbury pilgrims as more of like a mythical beings instead of like travelers okay um it's usual vibe he wanted to elevate the tales to be more of like a spiritual redemption rather than medieval satire of these dudes traveling around he's dramatic he wants it to be cooler of like let me do more fire okay here's the tea though he showed these illustrations to this art dealer Thomas Kromek I know a lot of Thomas who William worked for before he actually like illustrated another book for him thinking that he could hire him again for this potential publication right but no Thomas really liked this idea stole his ideas around what the pilgrims could look like and gave it to another more traditional and popular illustrator no bitch yeah I don't like that so the tea is he did William did illustrate some of this guy's books but it didn't do well I think this style was just too weird sure so so this Thomas guy is like I like this idea of the pilgrims looking this way but I needed to be more traditional looking and more normie looking so I'm going to give it to another artist I'm giving your idea to another artist sure and yeah Avi when William heard about that another illustrator got the job the whole ass idea that William had he was pissed off and accused Cromack of acting as a spy and this inspired him to have an exhibition of his work a total solo show including his original Canterbury pilgrims like fuck you Cromack you're done you're done everyone's gonna love my pilgrims more did they though well he holds the show above his brother's hosiery shop in Soho yeah bro stuck with dad's hosiery biz and alongside the exhibition he publishes descriptive catalog okay this is a manifesto attacking Cromack and his shadiness and overall a scathing critique of the art world in general so he's publishing his well he's exhibiting his paintings but also showing them alongside this book shitting on the art world shitting on all these asshole publishers and it failed it totally fucking failed he was ahead of his time crashed and burned here is an absolutely scathing review from the examiner in 1809 this one's gnar so another one coming okay it's just like these are different quotes okay quote an unfortunate lunatic whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement when the evolutions of a distempered brain are mistaken for the sallies of genius by those whose works have exhibited the soundest thinking in art the malady has indeed attained a pernicious height and it becomes a duty to endeavor to arrest its progress like they really did not want him doing any of this like they did not like him doing this like this is not art this is how are you not in jail how are you not taken away I mean this was not only we don't like this art we think you're insane yeah which is honestly I mean it's kind of they didn't get it yeah I mean but you could I mean I'm surprised I honestly not that I think he's in I'm surprised he's not been like instituted a little more yeah before yeah with his ideas yeah well I think too like he's pretty much in seclusion at this point he's not in the art world at all or like in society not I mean in society in a little bit but he's in the stude with Catherine like pumping out these things sure and yeah he's getting some odd jobs here and there from these great patrons who are awesome right and love his weird work but there's only like few and far between he's not really talked about even in art circles necessarily except for shit like this when he fails miserably they didn't get it they still didn't fucking get it at all yeah and William actually did anticipate this he's been through this before so in his descriptive catalog he wrote quote the connoisseurs and artists who have made art a science and reduced it to the rules of perspective are blind to the spirit like basically saying you're not gonna get this yeah like because I'm another level another level he knows they're idiots he knows they're fucking idiots and they're not gonna get it anyway yeah so not only does the public not appreciate his work they think he's nuts so he goes back to his little life is still writing his mystical poetry and developing his characters and taking these odd jobs here and there right and he's forgotten about for about a decade so he's just like in his little hole like for a decade then some cool young artists some fucking hipsters looking for some niche-ass art to talk about stumbled on his work they called themselves the ancients and they loved William's work they were romantic artists doing something a little else than this regular everyday classical shit they saw William as an outcasted visionary and at this point William is in his 60s and suddenly he has all these young artists getting into his work that's cool totally cool they surrounded him they loved hearing about his mystical visions and all of his prophecies they thought his work was super original and intense and dramatic they wanted to hear finally someone that wants to hear what he has to say besides Kath take us to your homeland we love you for 10 years only Kath is hearing about my craziness these guys love it they love it they totally get these new kids totally get it and this made William really happy finally of course yeah finally to be seen by artists and other thinkers and one of the members actually gave William his last commission illustrating Dante's divine comedy okay which we are getting into on patreon and Halloween so check out that if you want to know about Dante's fucked up drama and William and Dante would have been total buddies oh my god yeah they probably would have thought a little bit about the like super catholic thing but they're both super fiery and the like classist thing totally yeah they're both super fiery and fun so there are over a hundred works on paper illustrating the divine comedy he basically uses it to complete the journeys of his other allegorical characters they all seem to kind of come together in Dante's epic poem and as he's working on and and he was working hard on the series day and night working on the series all the way up to August 12th 1827 when he died of probably gallbladder disease at the age of 69 Catherine said he was sketching angels and singing hymns all the way until the end damn yeah and since he was mostly unknown he was buried in an unmarked grave until 2018 when they dug it up and gave him a proper memorial and Catherine would continue to sell and preserve his work and continue to talk to his spirit which she said visited her often until her death four years later her memorial was also restored in 2018 so they're together they're at a better place now okay good and William and Catherine's work continued to be somewhat ignored until 1863 when author Alexander Gilchrist published his biography and now that this wider audience is finally getting his vibes he went from crazy artist mystic weirdo to revolutionary visionary totally cool artist and this launched him into becoming one of the most prolific and important artists of today today his work is shown all over the place from the getty to the tate to the met all the big boys yes yes yes and in 2024 one of his illuminated poems sold for 4.3 million he continues to defy convention rebel against the man and feed the imagination of artists and writers everywhere he wasn't the red flag dragon everyone else around him was except for cat except for cat yeah except for cat yeah so good who is he guy at the party i don't know if we've done this one yet but i think she's perfect bjork okay yeah sure yes both artists define convention in their respective genres william fuses words with image and bjork fuses music and unique fashion and identity yeah they both invite us yes the whole thing is your mystic world heavily criticized too and misunderstood totally misunderstood but both got big because of their weirdo outsider cult following yeah and many different genres you got poets you got writers you got fashion people you got spiritual people all liking both of their work that's our ball dude so good and of course he has like so much more stuff so like if you're into him get into it he has a ton of books published so yeah get into his poems and stuff and you can join us on patreon to see our faces if you're into that if you already have faces in your mind that go with our voices and you don't want to see our real faces because that would be too weird for you your love is blinding it that's totally chill totally fine yeah totally fine just keep listening we love you to death we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you we love you Thank you.

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