Dante Today
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary and Popular Culture
Visual Art & Architecture Archive
Page 1 of 4 »
Yinka Shonibare
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/arts/design/21sont.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
"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
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/arts/design/21sont.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
watercolor lithograph by "Mata" (second half of the nineteenth century)
(photo by Kavi Montanaro)
Bettino Ricasoli as Count Ugolino attacks Urbano Rattazzi, who ousted him in 1892 from his leading role in the government.
This piece was on exhibit at the "150 Years of La Nazione" in Florence, Italy at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, March 7 - April 30, 2009.
Here are pdf close-ups of the re-written terzine:
1Download file
2Download file
3Download file
4Download file
Contributed by Kavi Montanaro
Diana Puntar, "Less Than Day, or Night" (2007)
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65178&Itemid=714
"Less Than Day, Or Night, my recent sculptural installation at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, continues to explore what I call 'homemade futurism.' The piece is inspired by the final cantos of Dante's Inferno in which Dante, led by Virgil, enters the freezing central pit of hell. At the end, as the pair climb their way out, Dante believes he is descending and becomes disoriented as they reach the top. Like many of us, he is fundamentally confused about the orientation of the world. I find it comforting to know that this kind of basic uncertainty has been with us for centuries..."
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65178&Itemid=714
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
Robert Talpin, "Everthing Imagined is Real (After Dante)" (2009)
Robert Talpin, "VIII. Get Back! (The River Styx)" (2008)
http://www.winstonwachter.com/exhibitions_ny.php
"Winston Wachter Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of Robert Taplin's new show entitled Everything Imagined is Real (After Dante), on exhibit from January 8 - February 7, 2009. Taplin's last exhibition at Winston Wachter included tabletop sculptures that depict the everyday with imagined realities. His newest work, again incorporates the strange with familiar while portraying the 14th century classic, Dante's Inferno, in nine cantos.
"Dante's epic poem is filled with allegory, symbolism and a balance between Dante's perceived reality and dreams. The first nine cantos follow Dante in his journey through the nine circles of Hell, lead by the Roman poet Virgil. While working with a clear narrative from Dante, Taplin infuses the works in this exhibition with contemporary nuances and situations as well as personal references. For example, in canto IV, Taplin explains that he has constructed an exact replica of his old house as the backdrop for the scene. Taplin displays each diorama from a different vantage point allowing the viewer to either peer into an intimate domestic scene or be confronted with wide-screen drama. He highlights Dante's role in the narrative by portraying his figure in full color. The rest of the characters and figures, including Beatrice and Virgil, are cast in resin and shown void of color."
http://www.winstonwachter.com/exhibitions_ny.php
January 8 - February 7, 2009
Winston Wachter Fine Art Gallery
530 W 25th St.
NY, NY 10001
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
Graffiti in Firenze
(Photo by Kavi Montanaro, 2008)
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)
Background Image: Domenico di Michelino, Dante and His Comedy, 1465
