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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Australian Painter Garry Shead Finds Divine Inspiration in Dante

August 6, 2019 By Gabriel Siwady '19

“Gregorian chants play softly and a curl of incense drifts high into the air at Garry Shead’s studio in Bundeena on the coast of the Royal National Park.

“For almost five months, Shead, one of Australia’s best-known figurative painters, has been grappling with a new series based on Dante Alighieri’s poem, The Divine Comedy. Invoking the spirit of the 700-year-old poet has been “terribly difficult”. He grimaces as he recalls stepping up to the blank canvas every morning, regardless of whether he felt like it or not.” […]    –Ali Gripper, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 12, 2014

Check out Garry Shead’s online art gallery here.

 

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2014, Art, Australia, Divine Comedy, Illustrations, Paintings, Sydney

“Wandering from the Straight Path of Clarity,” review of “The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists”

August 6, 2019 By Gabriel Siwady '19

“You may feel, at times, as if you’ve been handed a map, and then told that the map may or may not be accurate, may or may not relate to anything in the real world, may or may not be entirely a fiction, or a random design concocted by some clever trickster to mislead you. That is how the title of a new show at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art — ‘The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists’ — relates to the work on view, by more than 40 artists from 18 African countries.

“The exhibition is shoehorned into spaces not quite big enough for anything to breathe comfortably, filling temporary galleries, stairwells and passage spaces on four floors of the mostly subterranean museum. The current exhibition, curated by Simon Njami, is slightly smaller than the original Dante exhibition he presented in Frankfurt last spring, but it still sprawls, both in its physical layout (the route through its various rooms requires careful navigation) and intellectually.

“Consider one of the best works in the show, a large-scale drawing by Julie Mehretu, in which a finely etched suggestion of architectural facades is overlaid with a storm of delicate lines, smudges and erasures. In the catalogue, published in conjunction with the Frankfurt display, her work is listed as belonging to the ‘Purgatory’ part of the presentation; in Washington, it is in the ‘Inferno’ room. It isn’t the only work to migrate from one celestial realm to another, and those migrations suggest that the basic template borrowed from Dante is not to be taken too seriously.” […]    –Phillip Kennicott, The Washington Post, April 17, 2015

See also our post on the first iteration of Njami’s exhibition, featured at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s museum.

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2015, Africa, Art, Artists, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Smithsonian, Washington D.C.

“Where is Haven of Dante today?”

August 6, 2019 By Gabriel Siwady '19

“Some years ago, I entered a contest put on my Platinum Studios which would award it’s winner a contract with their publishing arm. The property was what became the graphic novel, Haven. If you’re not familiar with the property, you can find out more by clicking here.

“I’ve told the story before about how it started out as a prose novel when Markosia Enterprises took notice of it and wanted to produce it as a graphic novel. But between the time I had written the treatment and the time Markosia took interest, I had entered it into the aforementioned contest. Unfortunately, it didn’t win but that’s OK. What I did win in the process was an awesome friendship that has lasted years with who was one of the top dogs of Platinum Studios at the time, Dan Forcey. If you don’t know Dan, he’s a Co-Producer of Cowboys & Aliens. Dan’s been an awesome source of encouragement for me over the years and loves the property.

“So do I.

“I’m not trying to sound like an egomaniac but like most writers I do pour out my heart and soul into a project so that it is relatable and has depth, purpose and in this case, history. The Dante’s history span centuries so this is a story that could go on forever. And there is still lots of story to tell. As with all new properties, it’s a tough sale….especially with a female protagonist. Don’t ask me why, you’d be preaching to the choir about that one.” […]    –Leonardo Ramirez, “Where is Haven of Dante today?,” Leonardoverse, August 2019

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture, Written Word
Tagged with: 2019, Books, Comics, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Illustrations

The SEC vs. Cryptocurrency: From Dante to Facebook

August 6, 2019 By Gabriel Siwady '19

“The Securities and Exchange Commission, the multibillion dollar agency that safeguards investors, presently stands on the precipice of the layer Dante reserved for the indecisive. For, nearly a decade after Bitcoin burst onto the scene in 2010, there has been no concrete attempt at delineating purchaser from investor in the cryptocurrency market—indeed, it appears the agency is content to provide guidance regarding fraud and custody rather than defining products and attendant responsibilities for those soliciting funds for digital conversion.

“In the 14th century, Dante Alighieri forever shaped our vision of a retributive afterlife with his Divine Comedy. Tellingly, the first “level of hell” introduced therein was populated by those who could not decide (‘those who lived without occasion for infamy or praise’); to the celebrated Renaissance poet, those habiting the sidelines of history could hope for limbo, at best, in the final judgment.” […]    –J. Scott Colesanti, New York Law Journal, July 31, 2019

Categories: Consumer Goods, Written Word
Tagged with: 2019, Bitcoin, Divine Comedy, Facebook, Finance, Money, New York, Social Media, Technology, United States

BioWare Animator Creates Gorgeous ‘Dante’s Inferno’ Short Film

August 6, 2019 By Gabriel Siwady '19

“BioWare animator Tal Peleg released a new animated (NSFW) short film based on Visceral Games’ 2010 action title ‘Dante’s Inferno’ on Sunday.

“The game was loosely based on Dante Alighieri’s long narrative poem The Divine Comedy. But, it reimagines the poet as a Templar knight who goes on a bloody journey through the nine circles of Hell to rescue Beatrice from Lucifer.

“Peleg created his first ‘Dante’s Inferno’ fan fiction short four years ago. As a lover of both fantasy/medieval art and action-RPGs, he said in a recent behind-the-scenes blog post the game couldn’t have come out at a better time.” […]    –Stefanie Fogel, Variety, November 20, 2018

 

Categories: Consumer Goods, Digital Media, Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2018, Beatrice, Fanfiction, Fantasy, Films, Inferno, Short Films, Video Games

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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