The Blake Prize for Religious Art is an annual art prize in Australia. The prize was established in 1949 as an incentive to raise the standard of religious art. Founded by Mr R. Morley, the Reverend Michael Scott SJ, Rector of Newman College, University of Melbourne, and lawyer Mrs M. Tenison, it was named after the artist and poet William Blake. The first Blake Prize was won by Justin O'Brien in 1951.
The Blake Exhibitions have been a regular travelling exhibition around Australia, visiting various major cities and provincial galleries. The award of the Blake Prize to Charles Bannon in 1954 for his "Judas Iscariot" was one of the most controversial in its history; this opened controversy over what constituted religious art and over "abstract expressionism" which threatened to overwhelm the exhibition. The prize is administered by the Blake Society.
In 2008 the Blake Society established The Blake Poetry Prize to link art and literature and to give Australian poets new possibilities to explore the nature of spirituality in the 21st century. The Blake Poetry Prize is presented in association with the New South Wales Writers' Centre.
Read more about Blake Prize For Religious Art: List of Winners
Famous quotes containing the words blake, prize, religious and/or art:
““Why cannot the ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glistening eye to the poison of a smile?”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
to glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)