Dante Today
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary and Popular Culture
Visual Art & Architecture Archive
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Elisabeth Tonnard, "In this Dark Wood" (2008)
"This book is a modern gothic. It pairs images of people walking alone in nighttime city streets with 90 different English translations I collected of the first lines of Dante's Inferno. The images, showing a crowd of solitary figures, are selected from the same archive as used for Two of Us (the extraordinary Joseph Selle collection at the Visual Studies Workshop which contains over a million negatives from a company of street photographers working in San Francisco from the 40's to the 70's).
The book is set up in a repetitious way, to stress a sense of similarity, endlessness and interchangeability. The images are re-expressions of each other, and so are the texts."
Contributed by Guy Raffa (University of Texas - Austin)
Dino Galiano scultpures
"The sculpture garden features high relief marble carvings depicting scenes from Dante's Divine Comedy. The centerpiece is a solid marble sculpture entitled, The Commedia Block, which is carved on all four sides showing the divisions of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, as well as portraits of Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice."
http://www.casagaliano.com/image_gallery_dante_alighieri
Information about the The Casa Galiano
Evelyn Paul, Stories from Dante (1911) greeting cards
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, illustrations for the book
Spirit of the Ages greeting cards
Contributed by Virginia Jewiss (Yale Humanities Program)
Sandow Birk, Dante, and Islam
"THE last time that the artist Sandow Birk found himself concerned about responses from Muslims was in 2006. He was developing a film using puppets, inspired by his illustrations for a three-volume English-language version of Dante's "Divine Comedy," when riots broke out over the Danish newspaper cartoons representing Muhammad.
The outcry prompted Mr. Birk's film team to reconsider its own representation of the prophet. "We had Muhammad in our film because he was in Dante's poem," he said. "Dante put him in 'Inferno' as someone who supposedly created schisms." He argued at the time for respecting Dante's treatment of Muhammad, as artists like Gustave Doré had done before him.
But the film's producers were spooked, and Muhammad disappeared from the film. "I thought it was wrong to act out of fear," Mr. Birk said from his studio here.
"But I was upset for another reason too," he admitted. His film collaborators didn't know at the time, but quietly -- privately -- he had already embarked on another potentially controversial project: an effort to make by hand what he called a "personal Koran."
Curious to learn more about the book at the heart of Islam and the center of so many global events, in 2004 he began transcribing English translations of the book's 114 chapters and painting alongside them contemporary American scenes (though with no representations of Muhammad).
"I couldn't help but think," he said, "if this five-second clip in the Dante film could stir such debate, what was going to happen when I started showing my Koran?"
He will soon find out. The first exhibitions of Mr. Birk's "American Qur'an," a work-on-paper series that is roughly a third complete, is about to open: 30 hand-painted pages at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco starting on Thursday and another 30 at Koplin Del Rio gallery in Culver City starting Friday. (A New York exhibition slated for this fall at the P.P.O.W. Gallery was rescheduled for winter 2010 after a gallery fire.)"
...
Jori Finkel, The New York Times, August 28, 2009
See information about Birk's "Dante's Inferno" film here
Michael Mazar dies at 73
"Michael Mazur, a relentlessly inventive printmaker, painter and sculptor whose work encompassed social documentation, narrative and landscape while moving back and forth between figuration and abstraction, died on Aug. 18 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 73 and lived in Cambridge and Provincetown, Mass."
...
"While attending Amherst College he studied with the printmaker and sculptor Leonard Baskin, who was teaching at Smith College. After taking a year off to study in Italy, where his lifelong fascination with Dante began, he received a bachelor's degree in 1957 and went on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art from the Yale School of Art and Architecture."
...
William Grimes, The New York Times, August 29, 2009
His illustrations of the Inferno here
"Fa come natura fece in foco": Glasstress, Venice Biennale
"In 1972, glass ceased to have its own section at the Venice Biennale, when the inclusion of what were considered "decorative arts" was abandoned. But at this year's event, glass has made a comeback in two separate shows: "Glasstress," an official parallel exhibition at Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti on the Grand Canal, and "Fa come natura fece in foco," which borrows a line from Dante's Divine Comedy ("Do as nature does in the flame") to evoke the fiery glass furnaces of Murano, at the Padiglione Venezia in the Biennale's Castello Gardens (both until Nov. 22)."
Roderick Conway Morris, The New York Times, August 7, 2009
See Paradiso IV, 59
The Thinker Sells For Record Price
"The Thinker is one of the most recognizable sculptures in the world. It even has a role in the film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Last week one of the Thinker sculptures by French master Auguste Rodin was sold at auction for more than 3 million euros ($4.2 million) in Paris at auctioneers Drouot. This Thinker, which is just 28.5 inches high, set a record for any of the Thinkers. This statue is part of a series of 21 sculptures made by Rodin. It was originally meant to be part of Rodin's Gates of Hell inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy. Rodin made a first small plaster version around 1880 and the first large scale bronze was presented to the public in 1904. This particular Thinker was purchased by Emile Chouanard in 1917, the same year it was cast. Another Rodin statue owned by Chouanard, "Little Eve" also sold for a record price of over 2.4 million euros at the auction."
Deidre Woollard, June 22, 2009
http://www.luxist.com/
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
"The Standard Hotel's Stunning Video Collage of Heaven and Hell" (2009)
"Guests at the swank new Standard Hotel, on the western edge of Manhattan, are treated to an otherworldly piece of eye candy: "Civilization," a depiction of heaven, hell, and purgatory created by video artist Marco Brambilla. Inspired by Dante's Inferno, it's cobbled together from hundreds of scenes, lifted from movies; the piece runs as one enormous video collage. As the elevator rises, the sequence, running from an overhead projector, ascends to heaven. As the elevator descends, the video runs in reverse, ending in hell."
-Cliff Kuang, Fast Company, June 4, 2009
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi, and Zhang An, "Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante" (2006)
"This extraordinary painting depicting 103 figures from world history in striking detail has become the latest internet hit.
"Internet detectives have identified these three as little-known Chinese/Taiwanese artists named as Dudu, Li Tiezi, and Zhang An.
"They created the oil painting - titled 'Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante' - in 2006, although it has only become a viral internet hit in the past few weeks.
"Alastair Sooke, art writer at The Daily Telegraph, said that the work reflected a trend of contemporary Chinese artists adopting Western styles and subjects.
'But the Dante reference makes us wonder whether we are looking at some nether-circle deep inside the Inferno: this is a vision of Celebrity Hell,' he added."
Matthew Moore, London Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2009
Click here to view a high-resolution, annotated version of the painting. Dante may be seen with his Commedia in the upper right hand corner of the painting, standing among the three artists.
Mario Palanti, "Palacio Barolo," Buenos Aires, Argentina (1923)
"Luis Barolo, a progressive and influential agricultural producer, arrived in Argentina in 1890. He was the first to import cotton spinning machinery and concentrated on the importation of textiles. He installed the first combed wool spinning equipment and initiated the cultivation of cotton in the province of Chaco. During the Centennial of the May Revolution he met the architect Mario Palanti (1885-1979), whom he contracted for the project of a building he had in mind. This property would be exclusively for rental purposes. Luis Barolo, like all Europeans living in Argentina at the time, believed that Europe would witness a series of wars that would destroy the continent. Anxious to preserve the remains of the famous Italian poet Dante Alighieri, he wanted to construct a building inspired by the poet's work, "The Divine Comedy"....
"The architect Palanti was a scholar of the Divine Comedy and filled the palace with references to it. The design of the building is based on the golden section and the golden number. The general building and the Divine Comedy are divided into three parts: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. The nine access points represent the nine circles and the nine hierarchies of Hell. The lighthouse represents the nine angelic choirs. Over the lighthouse is the Southern Cross constellation, aligned with the axis of the Barolo on the first days of June at 7:45 p.m. The height of 100 meters corresponds to the 100 cantos of Dante's work, with 22 floors, equal to the stanzas of the verses in the Divine Comedy. The care in detail characterizes the building, from the personal references in Latin to Dante's work throughout the building, to its inauguration on the poet's anniversary."
Auguste Rodin, "The Gates of Hell"
"Not far from The Thinker stands Rodin's monumental masterpiece, The Gates of Hell, installed in the garden of the Museum in 1937. By a decree of 16 August 1880, Rodin received a commission from the Directorate of Fine Arts for a monumental door which was to be decorated with low reliefs inspired by The Divine Comedy of Dante....
"[Rodin] ignored two thirds of the poem by Dante to concentrate on its darkest side, the part about Hell. The first year was primarily devoted to sketches which followed the text of the poem closely, but once he started modelling, he only retained a few identifiable characters, such as Paolo and Francesca, Ugolino and his Children, The Shades, and The Thinker, a portrayal of Dante himself, among a host of figures in different sizes."
http://www.musee-rodin.fr/senf1-e.htm
"Headless Bodies From a Bottomless Imagination"
"In his Victorian house in the East End here Yinka Shonibare, the British-Nigerian conceptual artist, perched on an exercise ball at the wooden table in his book-crammed study, sipping peppermint tea and examining a shipment of faux oysters on the half shell.
"A stationary hand cycle sat beside him, an electric wheelchair across from him. One of Bob and Roberta Smith's slogan paintings, "Duchamp stinks like a homeless person," hung above him, and a tuna on toast prepared by his housekeeper was sandwiched between a vase of yellow tulips and a stack of Dante volumes: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso..."
"On that gray May day in the East End, Mr. Shonibare was trying to decompress after directing a weeklong photo shoot that involved 25 live snakes, 14 nude models, 6 pigs and 2 lamb's heads. Inspired by Dante, Arthur Miller, Gustav Dore' and the financial crisis, the shoot was a work in progress, "Willy Loman: The Rise and Fall," which seeks to depict what happens after the death of the salesman. (Hint: It's hellish.)..."
Deborah Sontag, The New York Times, June 17, 2009
Background Image: Domenico di Michelino, Dante and His Comedy, 1465
