And I have the unfair advantage of not knowing anything about art.

William Blake’s Universe review – polymath’s paintings are outclassed by the Germans.

A wide-ranging exhibition on the English mystic makes unfortunate comparisons with his European contemporaries who, it turns out, are the far superior Romantics…

“Barry was hid. I am hid”, wrote Blake of their common struggle against the art establishment – but he probably didn’t even know his German contemporaries, Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich, existed. Runge scrutinises himself with sickly melancholy while Friedrich depicts himself with a bandaged eye, not covering any physical injury but suggesting his wounded soul.