Dante Archives - Page 3 of 3

Pinacoteca Dantesca

March 2, 2021 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

“Nel gennaio del 1994 quando riceve dal Prof. Corrado Gizzi l’allora Direttore dell’istituto di Studi e Ricerche ‘Casa di Dante in Abruzzo’ l’invito a realizzare un’ opera con soggetto dantesco a scelta dell’artista da destinare alla Pinacoteca F. Bellonzi , Sughi sta ancora lavorando ad un gruppo di dipinti dal Titolo Andare dove? Il nucleo principale del ciclo risale agli anni 1991-1992, Sughi a proposito scrive :

“’Sono gli anni dell’implosione dell’Unione Sovietica , la fine per molti di una speranza di un’ideologia che aveva attraversato tutta la prima metà e una parte cospicua della seconda metà del 900. Tanti avevano creduto in questa ideologia , in questa prima grande rivoluzione socialista , ma sappiamo tutte le rivoluzioni hanno il destino di essere tradite e alla fine gettano nello smarrimento , nella paura, nella lontananza da se stessi tutti gli uomini che ci avevano creduto. … Da questo presupposto è nato il ciclo Andare dove ? … poi si è dilatato e non riguardava più l’implosione, la caduta del Comunismo come nei primi dipinti ( L’uomo con le valigie, Addio alla casa rossa)ma il destino dell’uomo, e sono venuti questi quadri verdi con degli uomini nel paesaggio o che guardano da una terrazza o che sembrano persi nel contemplare, tutti intitolati Andare dove? Quasi che l’uomo si trovi in una situazione critica, di passaggio e cerchi la sua identità all’interno di un labirinto che in questi quadri è rappresentato dalla natura.’
in A.C. Quintavalle, Sughi, Catalogo della mostra al Complesso del Vittoriano, Roma, Skira editore, Milano 2007, pag. 190.

“Al centro della tela in piedi la figura di Dante ferma, quasi restia alla mano tesa, appena accennata di Virgilio , che gli si offre d’innanzi, a ragione della forte dominante nel canto I dell’Inferno del tema dello smarrimento, del dubbio e della paura si inserisce perfettamente,senza forzatura alcuna , nella discorso pittorico che Sughi allora stava svolgendo.” [. . .] –Alberto Sughi, Arte32.

Hyperallgeric: “Why is Dante the Florentine still present with us 700 years after his death?”

February 24, 2021 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

“Recognition of the poem’s importance began very early. The first man to write a commentary on The Divine Comedy was Dante’s eldest son, Jacopo. A full exegesis of the work came several decades later. There are 800 early manuscripts of the poem in existence

“It is in some of these that we begin to see the different ways in which artists responded to this often dense and difficult text, with its multiple layers of meaning. First we spot small illustrations of the poem’s principal characters at the beginning of each hand-scribed canto. A little later, scenes from the poem begin to appear in churches, on frescoes by Luca Signorelli in Orvieto Cathedral (c. 1500), for example.

“The most important visual interpreters of the poem were three: Sandro Botticelli, who lived in the 16th century, William Blake, and Gustave Doré, both of whom lived in the 19th: a Florentine (like Dante himself), an Englishman, and a Frenchman.” [. . .] –Michael Glover, Hyperallergic, February 13, 2021.

Will Brewbaker on Shane McCrae’s “Sometimes I Never Suffered”

November 6, 2020 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

“This act of holding together both heaven and earth pervades Shane McCrae’s Sometimes I Never Suffered, the prolific poet’s latest collection. Racial injustice, economic inequality, simple human cruelty — McCrae addresses all of these subjects, these facts of the world, head-on — while, like Dante, transposing the literal into the otherworldly. [. . .]

“The final two poems in Sometimes I Never Suffered return explicitly to Dantean territory. Famously, the last word in each section of Dante’s Comedy is the Italian word ‘stelle,’ meaning ‘stars.’ In a sly parallel, McCrae makes this Limber’s last word, too. After describing meeting one of those souls who were ‘babies when they died […] [who] walk around in sailor hats with blank / Looks on their faces’ — another ingenious creation — Limber says:

… when I tried to talk to
Him it was like I wasn’t there
So I peeked in his mouth

and in his mouth was the whole sky and stars

“Not only does this final line offer a remarkably coherent cosmic scope, but it also serves as a segue into the book’s last movement — a multipage poem that returns to the hastily assembled angel’s story and finds the angel first building, then climbing the ladder to heaven.” [. . .] —Will Brewbaker, Los Angeles Review of Books, October 13, 2020.

Read more of Brewbaker’s reviews here.

Rauschenberg’s Dante in the Time of Pandemic

November 4, 2020 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

“Dante’s three-part epic poem portrays the journey souls take after death. Essentially a socio-economic commentary on Florentine life, with strong moral undertones and focus on the human condition, its themes can be adapted to any time. Today, in the face of Covid-19, the 700-year-old Commedia resonates strongly. Now is a perfect time to reflect on the work through its visual depictions. Although countless artists have illustrated the work since its medieval publication – Sandro Botticelli, Gustave Doré, and John Flaxman, to name a few – modern artists have shown how its relevance lives on to this day. Perhaps the most progressive modern rendering of Dante’s epic to date is seen through the work of artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008).

“Dante is ambiguous in his writing on the Sodomites, reflecting the reticence surrounding the subject of homosexuality in his day. Rauschenberg mirrors this ambiguity in his illustration with an empty speech bubble beneath a red outline of his own traced foot. The tracing inserts Rauschenberg into the narrative just as Dante the Poet occasionally appears in the text, separate from Dante the Pilgrim, a personal touch that is seldom seen in Commedia illustrations.” [. . .] —Flora Igoe, The Art Story Blog, 2020

See Rauschenberg’s full Inferno series here.

“Dante’s Inferno Films World Premieres Take Over Italy”

November 2, 2020 By Jasmine George, FSU '24

“Dante’s Hell and Inferno Dantesco Animato, both films produced and directed by Boris Acosta, will premiere at MIA (Rome film festival market) on October 17, 2020, and later on will have its world festival premiere at the Ravenna Nightmare Film Festival on October 31, Halloween Day and will continue on to November 8, 2020.

Both films are based on Inferno, Dante Alighieri’s first part of the literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. Not until now, has this story been told so descriptively by visual art from artists of the highest caliber and an array of celebrities and known scholars.”[. . .] –Global Film Sales, WFMZ-TV News, 2020

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