Dante Today
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary and Popular Culture
Visual Art Archive
Claymation "Inferno" by Alexis Waller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW8L7O8qGgg
http://alexiswallerimages.com/splash.html
Dante graffiti in Rome
http://eternallycool.net/2008/06/dante-hits-the-streets/
"From the stenciled cutout of Virgil and Dante on the outside of the building (see top photo) to the artful images sprayed on the gallery walls (see above and below), we're totally taken."
eternallycool.net, June 18, 2008
http://eternallycool.net/2008/06/dante-hits-the-streets/
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
"Enchanted Stories: Chinese Shadow Theater in Shaanxi" at the China Institute in NYC
"Fire Dragon" Qing Dynasty
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/02/07/arts/08shadow-slideshow_4.html
"One popular genre consists of scenarios of hell. An entire wall of the exhibition is devoted to a play called 'The Twice-Visited Netherworld,' a sort of Dante's Inferno in which a scholar receives a special tour of the torturous 'Yellow Springs' described in Chinese folk religion. One startlingly vivid set piece shows a skeletal figure being boiled in oil (the punishment for blackmail and slander); in another, pierced and bloody bodies languish on Knife Mountain (home to those who have killed people or animals). As the legend of Emperor Wu of Han suggests, shadow theater has always had a powerful connection to the afterlife."
Karen Rosenberg, The New York Times, February 8, 2008
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntget=2008/02/08/arts/design/08shad.html&tntemail0=y&oref=slogin
Christian Anthony, "And Everything In Between" (2006)
"In his video short, Christian Anthony has appropriated film and television clips creating a collage of images and scenes describing the afterlife. These fragments, taken from the last several decades, emphasize the tension between the media-driven, pop culture representations of heaven, hell and purgatory and people's personal perceptions of these concepts. Anthony's portrait of the collective afterlife is at times comic, violent and wicked as it tosses up stereotypes, self-righteousness and fear."
San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art
http://www.sjica.org/exhibitions/nightmoves/anthony/anthony.htm
quicktime preview: http://www.3580.com/staging/everything/everything_in_between_clip.mov
Artist Sergio Vega on Dante
Sergio Vega, detail from The Golden Age with Mosquitoes, 1999
http://www.bombsite.com/vega/vega2.html
Nicolas Guagnini: The first piece of yours I'd ever seen was a small painted sculpture, a parrot with the face of Dante Alighieri. My obvious reaction was amusement. Dante could not stop writing, just as parrots can't stop talking. Once the humor subsided, I understood what you were getting at: Dante was giving us a version of biblical themes, namely heaven and hell, in his own contemporary terms. Are you a theological commentator or an evolutionist?
Sergio Vega: I am glad you bring up that piece, Dante-parrot, because it functions as an axis upon which most of the work I have produced in the last eight years hinges. At the time I made it, I was puzzled by the term U.S. politicians were using, when they referred to the countries of Latin America as "our backyard." Immersed as I was in Dante's work, I decided to make a cast from a replica of his death mask to represent a habitant of that backyard, like one of those cement dwarfs people use to decorate their gardens. Dante is turned into a parrot as if someone had put a spell on him; he is entering the Garden of Eden (in Canto 28 of Purgatorio). Besides the joke that the parrot's beak is in this case Dante's famous nose, the piece proposes a paradox of ideas about originality, staging the contradictions of a constituted Latin subject: Dante, the author who articulated a new language in order to produce his own work, is embodied in the vernacular representation of a bird that mimics speech.
...
http://www.bombsite.com/vega/vega.html
Contributed by Hope Stockton (Bowdoin '07)
The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
"Inside the building that tranquillity gives way to a comic-book version of Dante's Divine Comedy, with strict divisions between various worlds. Visitors enter via an internal bridge that crosses over an underground atrium. From here, a vast hall conceived on the scale of a piazza leads to a cafeteria overlooking the calm surface of a reflecting pool. On one side of the hall looms the ziggurat form of the museum; on the other, a wall of glass-enclosed offices. Here the spectral glow of the interior of the cast-glass skin evokes the stained-glass windows of a medieval cathedral."
Nicolai Ouroussoff, "Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, Encased in Glass"
The New York Times, May 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/arts/design/26visi.html
Contributed by Darren Fishell (Bowdoin, '09)
"The Fall of the Damned" lampshade by Luc Merx of Gadget International
"Dutch architect Luc Merx's lampshade is an algorithmic mass of writhing nudes that recalls the classical motif of the fall of the damned. He imagines the lamp hanging above a dining table, the shock of the frozen, terrified bodies disturbing diners with age-old questions of guilt and morality, issues usually kept behind closed doors." (Chistian Holl + Luc Merx)
http://kostasvoyatzis.wordpress.com/2007/04/19/the-damned-lampshade/
Kozik's Inferno
http://www.wildbrain.com/tv.html
"Kozik's Inferno" is a twelve-episode animated version by Frank Kozik, a rock n' roll poster artist in San Francisco. It was featured as an internet cartoon in 2000. (Produced by W!ldbrain, Inc.)
Contributed by George Evelyn
Rafael Kayanan's illustrations of the "Divine Comedy"
http://members.aol.com/kayanancomicart/
Kevin J. Gross, "Dante's Vision"
a Mandelbrot Set fractal
http://www.goshen.edu/~kevin/early/early.html
Sandow Birk's illustrations of the "Divine Comedy"
http://www.sandowbirk.com/index.html
http://www.cclarkgallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=9&Count=0
"Inferno & Paradiso" a photojournalistic exhibit in South Africa (2001)
Curated by Alfredo Jaar
"World renowned artist/photographer Alfredo Jaar curated this show which is presented as a collaboration between the SANG, the BildMuseet in Umea, Sweden, and Riksutstallningar, the Swedish Travelling Exhibitions Organisation. His curatorial method was this: 'I invited 18 photojournalists from around the world to contribute two images to the exhibition (inspired by Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy). For 'Inferno' I asked them to select the single image that was the most difficult to produce, the one that caused the most pain and anguish. And for 'Paradiso', the most joyful one, the one that has given them the most happiness in the world.' "
--Sue Williamson
http://www.artthrob.co.za/01june/reviews.html
http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Paradiso-Alfredo-Jaar/dp/9170570450/sr=8-7/qid=1166670595/ref=sr_1_7/104-7728532-8483908?ie=UTF8&s=books
Contributed by Charlie Russell (Bowdoin, '08)
Chris Sullivan, "Dante's Divine Comedy" (2006)
Anna Booth, "Inf. XXVI" (2006)
Jennifer Strange, "Inspired by Dante: An Artist's Journey Through The Divine Comedy"
http://inspiredbydante.home.att.net/
Contributed by Jennifer Strange
"Stolen Goya found in Montenegro"
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4096338.stm
Contributed by Susan Wegner
Dante and Swan
Contributed by Richard Abrams
Janet Van Fleet, sculptures for "A Guided Tour of Dante's Inferno"
Neocommedia
"An immersive adaptation of Dante's Divine Comedy exploring the modern deity of Information."
http://www.ikatun.com/neocommedia/#
"Dante's Inferno" a comic strip with an evil character named Dante
http://aelis.chaosnet.org/inferno/index.html
M.W. Kaluta, "Dante's Inferno Portfolio"
1975, for Christopher Enterprises
"Dante's Inferno" font
http://www.specialtyfonts.com/pers/fontsC-D.htm
Ella van Wyk's illustrations of the Inferno's guardians
http://www.fsu.edu/~proghum/interculture/ellavanwyk.htm
"Dante's Inferno" by Alan Sherwood
Tribute to Dante's "Comedy" Art Exhibit
San Francisco, May 2007
http://www.patronsofart.com/
http://www.patronsofart.com/DDCTRIBUTE.html
Michael Mazur's illustrations of "The Divine Comedy"
http://www.dante-inferno.net/Pages/WelcomeDante.html
http://www.maryryangallery.com/Artists%20Folder/Mazur/michael_mazur.html
Book: Michael Mazur Etchings: L'Inferno (Georgetown, Mass.: R.E. Townsend Editions, 2001).
Contributed by Richard Lindemann
Background Image: Domenico di Michelino, Dante and His Comedy, 1465
