Art: Blake burns bright at overlooked Tate

By T.J. McNAMARA

William Blake's Jerusalem is probably the best-known poem in Britain after God Save the Queen. Set to music it is sung everywhere from school assemblies to the Last Night of the Proms.

The poem talks of dark satanic mills and this, like almost everything else in Blake's poetry, is ambiguous. It may refer to politics because Blake lived through the troubled time of the French Revolution but most people think of it in connection with the awful factories of the 19th-century industrial revolution.

The new Tate Modern Gallery, reportedly the largest exhibition space in Europe, was originally built in the 1960s.

Anyone who stood near its immense, anonymous cliffs of brick on the south bank of the Thames when it was a power station would inevitably be reminded of satanic mills.

All changed. The power station has become a cathedral devoted to Modern art, that is, European and American art of the 20th century. This has enabled the splendid old Tate Gallery on the other bank of the Thames to be given over entirely to British art. It is now called the Tate Britain.

The power station that is now the Tate Modern is no longer dark and blank. The sheer brick walls have been pierced by long windows and the erstwhile chimney stands as a spire and is given, by night, an odd, awkward blue cap. Across the full length of the roof is a vast light-box.

Inside the structure, what was the turbine room is now an immensely lofty entrance hall that has a cathedral feel. This is conveyed by its sheer height and space rather than by the huge riveted piers and girders painted black that make up the structure and the travelling cranes that have been left as evidence of the former function of the building.

It is impressive but hard, dark and cold.

The building is reached by a footbridge across the Thames just where it is needed. It leaps across the river from a point just below a porch on the side of St Pauls. It is a superb site and a superb construction mounted on two widely separated Y-shaped supports but only visually superb. As engineering, it is flawed. It was not complete when the Queen declared it open and it swayed so perilously under the first users that it has been closed since.

The distinguished British sculptor Anthony Caro was part of the team who designed the bridge, along with architect Norman Foster and engineers Ove Arup.

Lately, Caro has added to controversy by insisting that his original design would have been stable. He maintains it was the engineers who messed up the bridge.

The undeniable splendour of the Tate Modern has attracted a huge number of visitors though the collection is arranged neither chronologically nor in schools of painters. It is classified according to themes - still-life, the body etc. This is done so that clever juxtapositions can be made between work from different times and places but it has the effect of making the spread of work seem thin in the midst of the big concrete and steel spaces. Nevertheless, there is the element of pleasant surprise when you come unexpectedly on a Pollock or Cezanne where you never thought to see one.

The novel splendours of the Tate Modern have had another unfortunate effect. It is such an attraction that visitors are neglecting the British Tate.

This is more of a pity because it is hosting a grand exhibition of the work of William Blake.

Blake was one of the two examples in English of someone equally great as both poet and artist. The other is Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti was famous in his day but Blake, born in London in 1757, lived and worked in obscurity and poverty, making a slim living as an engraver and printer.

In obscurity his singular mind flourished. All his life he saw visions. The powerful force of his imagination created huge figures of Old Testament prophets to whom he spoke and was answered. He was considered mad by some who met him, and was once arrested for treason. He had to wait almost until the 20th century for recognition. His art was not separate from his poetry. He wrote and illustrated poems, and printed them himself. Only a few of his images are meant to stand alone as paintings.

As part of the exhibition at the British Tate, a press such as he might have used stands like a guillotine in one room. On such a press he printed poems that ran to as many as 100 pages of mighty verse with each page adorned and explained by a powerful illustration.

Blake was ruled by his imagination. He could see the world in a grain of sand. He saw reason and logic as enemies of the spirit. One of his most famous images is of The Ancient of Days, setting compasses across the world. This represents the danger of limitations for Blake. Blake's other name for this figure of authority is Urizen, opposite of reason.

The strongest confrontation with Blake in this exhibition, where many images are warm and joyous, is in a room called Chambers of the Imagination, which is dominated by pictures of Newton as the embodiment of cold reason, and Nebuchadnezzar degraded to the status of a beast. The uniquely bold conception and the colour of these works are a tribute to Blake's artistic powers.

Blake was a true original and this is the largest exhibition held of his work. It represents a desire to give him recognition as a great national figure in Britain.

If anything could work as a counterweight to the avant garde European art in the Tate Modern and reaffirm the strength of the British tradition this exhibition will do it.