William Blake at the Whitworth Art Gallery

Everybody loves William Blake.

For the Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a bridge between the fine and the applied arts. The Pre-Raphaelites drew inspiration from his use of colour, space and the human form. Patti Smith saw him as mystical seer and anti-establishment activist. ‘Because the Night’ you might say.

In the words of Walter Crane: ‘Blake is distinct and stands alone.’

Blake’s Shadow traces Blake’s influence on the art from the eighteenth century until today, presenting us with the thoughts, words and images of the artist, but also those of his devotees past and present. There’s a lot of useful background – on some of the most important works, such as the intense and touching Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Nothing, however, on the ironies of how his best-known legacy, the poem Jerusalem, adapted for music by Charles Parry, has been neutralised through over-use: darling of the Proms, hand-picked for royal weddings, lauded as alternative national anthem, embraced as school song. On the afternoon I visited, the curator reminded us also of England Rugby Union’s flirtation, and, with a nice-but-dim Radio 4 nod to pop culture, told us about the poem’s rendition by ‘a very strange band called The Fall’. Bless.

And here’s the danger of an exhibition that sees an artist as much through other peoples eyes as his own. Arguing for greatness through the weight of approval of others can distract us from the main event and main personality.

Despite this, most of the comparative exhibits work well, demonstrating just how strangely different and distinctive Blake is. The Pre-Raphaelites are overcomplicated and dated beside his pared-down simplicity; Eduardo Paolozzi’s chunky little bronze Newton can’t divide space and line as effectively as Blake’s Newton. Only Anish Kapoor’s aquatint series Blackness from her Womb has the dark lonely majesty of Blake’s universe.

Cecil Collins, Counterpoint, Cover design for magazine

William Blake, The Ancient of Days, 1827 © The Whitworth Art Gallery

‘Mind-forg’d manacles’, a phrase from Blake’s London, also gives its name to a related exhibition devoted to Blake’s anti-slavery stance and the context in which he was working. An etching entitled Europe supported by Africa and America parades its message with deceptively coy disapproval.

William Blake, The Shrine of Apollo, 1809 © The Whitworth Art Gallery

And it is Blake’s elemental oddness, his alien quality that etches its impression on the onlooker despite the clamouring voices of the emulators and admirers. In the words of Victorian designer Walter Crane: ‘Blake is distinct and stands alone.’

Ultimately this is what makes the exhibition rewarding and worth visiting.

Blake’s Shadow is at the Whitworth Art Gallery until 20 April. Whitworth Art Gallery, Oxford Road, University. 0161 275 7450. www.whitworth.man.ac.uk