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Jim Shaw, Donald and Melania Trump descending the escalator into the 9th circle of hell reserved for traitors frozen in a sea of ice (2020)

March 19, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Jim Shaw’s silkscreen print Donald and Melania Trump descending the escalator into the 9th circle of hell reserved for traitors frozen in a sea of ice (2020) depicts the former US President and First Lady passing into the ninth circle, populated by members of the Trump inner circle: John Bolton, Michael Cohen, Omarosa Manigault, Anthony Scaramucci, Jeff Sessions, and others. The lake of Cocytus appears to have been displaced to the ground floor of a dilapidated American shopping mall.

Simon Lee Gallery describes Shaw’s collected works thus: “The practice of American artist Jim Shaw (b. 1952, Midland, Michigan) spans a wide range of artistic media and visual imagery. Since the 1970s, Shaw has mined the detritus of American culture, finding inspiration for his artworks in comic books, pulp novels, rock albums, protest posters, thrift store paintings – his ever-growing collection of found artworks has been the subject of its own exhibition on several occasions – and advertisements. At the same time, Shaw has consistently turned to his own life and, in particular, his unconscious, as a source of artistic creativity. Providing a blend of the personal, the commonplace and the uncanny, Shaw’s works frequently place in dialogue images of friends and family members with world events, pop culture and alternate realities. Often unfolding in long-term, narrative cycles, the works contains systems of cross-references and repetitions, which rework similar symbols and motifs, allowing a story-like thread to be perceived.”   –“Biography,” Simon Lee Gallery

See a discussion of Shaw’s exhibit Hope Against Hope, hosted by the Simon Lee Gallery (London) from October 20, 2020, to January 16, 2021, in The Art Newspaper.

Contributed by Deborah Parker (University of Virginia)

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2020, American Politics, Cocytus, Commentary, Donald Trump, Gustave Doré, Ice, Ninth Circle, Political Leaders, Presidents, Printing, Prints, Shopping, United States

Tomás Eloy Martínez, Purgatorio (2008)

February 16, 2021 By Jasmine George, FSU '24

“It should be noted from the outset that unlike Dante’s Purgatorio, which explores the painful processes of self‐examination of those who sinned, repented before they died, and are preparing themselves to enter Paradise’s realm of bliss, Martínez’s Purgatorio is a meditation on a state of suffering by the innocent victims of Argentina’s dictatorial regimes of the 1970s. The notion of a ‘purgatory’ for repentant sinners in Dante, therefore, is creatively transformed in Martinez’s Purgatorio to suggest a shameful period of Argentina’s history plagued by repression and violence, but most importantly, by the pain it generated for decades to come in those who were affected by it.”   –Efrain Kristal, “What Is, Is Not: Dante in Tomás Eloy Martínez’s Purgatorio,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2012 (abstract publicly available; full text behind paywall)

The novel, originally published in Spanish in 2008, was translated into English by Frank Wynne (Bloomsbury, 2011).

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2008, Argentina, Book Review, Exile, Latin America, Novels, Political Leaders, Politics, Purgatorio, Purgatory, Violence

“Dante, Inferno light up DeWine on new song”

February 8, 2021 By Jasmine George, FSU '24

“John Dante has a message for Gov. Mike DeWine.

“John Dante and the Inferno will debut a new song called ‘Hello Gov’ner’ on a live EP set for release on Friday.

“The EP will be accompanied by a video version that was shot at Nexus Sound Studio in Youngstown and will debut on YouTube.”   –Andy Gray, Tribune Chronicle, 2020

Read the full article here.

Categories: Music, Performing Arts, Written Word
Tagged with: 2020, American Politics, Inferno, Music, Ohio, Political Leaders, Punk Rock, Rock, YouTube

“Dante Alighieri racconta la politica”

January 8, 2021 By Professor Arielle Saiber

See the whole “Dante Alighieri racconta la politica” Facebook page here (last accessed January 13, 2021).

Categories: Digital Media
Tagged with: 2021, American Politics, Donald Trump, Facebook, Inferno, Italian Politics, Italy, Political Leaders, Politics, Social Commentary, Social Media, Washington D.C., White House

Charles Sykes, “The Agony of the Anti-Anti-Trumpers” (2020)

November 5, 2020 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

vision-of-hell-charles-sykes-agony-anti-anti-trumpers-2020“They are destined to be forgotten. ‘The world will let no fame of theirs endure,’ Virgil explains. ‘Let us not talk of them, but look and pass.’ Dante describes the vast horde who chase after the elusive banner that “raced on so quick that any respite seemed unsuited to it.” Behind the banner, he writes, ‘trailed so long a file/ of people—I should never have believed/ that death could have unmade so many souls.’

“This, of course, got me thinking about the anti-anti-Trumpers and their season of agita.

“A cry went up this week from the precinct of the anti-anti-Trumpers suggesting that the selection of Kamala Harris was the moment for their decisive break into formal indecisiveness. As much as they loathed Donald Trump, they insisted, there was no way that they could support a Biden-Harris ticket.

“But the choice of Harris wasn’t really a tipping point, because the anti-antis were never going to support a viable opponent to Trump. The essence of anti-anti-Trumpism is the full recognition of the awfulness of Trump and all of his works, but a firm resolve not to actually do anything to confront them.” [. . .]    —Charles Sykes, The Bulwark, August 14, 2020

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2020, America, American Politics, Donald Trump, Journalism, Political Leaders, Politics, Presidents

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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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