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“Columbia Art League Exhibit Honors Dante With Visions of the Afterlife”

February 6, 2021 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

columbia-art-league-dante-visions-of-afterlife-2021“CAL’s current exhibit, The Divine Comedy, is grounded in Dante Alighieri’s medieval masterwork, a revealing, often harrowing pilgrimage through the stations of the afterlife. CAL artists responded to Dante’s themes, and everlasting concepts of life beyond our own, in personal and particular ways.

“Heaven, hell and purgatory are represented within these images, and relatively well-balanced, CAL education and outreach director Karen Shortt-Stout said. Given the existential troubles of 2020 and early 2021, she thought artists might bend in greater number toward the visual language of fire and brimstone.

“Viewers don’t have to be well-acquainted with Dante — or ascribe to any particular theology — to see themselves represented in the exhibit, she said.

“‘Certainly the idea of hell, the idea of purgatory, of being in limbo or the idea of heaven — bliss — these are psychological states that we all experience in our daily lives,’ she said. ‘A lot of the artists grabbed onto that interpretation.’

“Bliss radiates from one corner of the gallery. In close proximity, pieces by Peggy Hurley and Jane Mudd offer distinct but equally compelling visions of joy. Hurley’s encaustic and mixed-media “Shower of Grace and Love” evokes a metaphysical wash of color, light and kindness.

“Mudd’s oil painting ‘Paradisio, Afterlife Party’ bears witness as figures dance, freed from the bonds of earthly existence. They boogie down beneath shapely clouds which bear the visage of God-as-bearded-old-man and resemble other divine creatures.” [. . .]    –Aarik Danielsen, Columbia Daily Tribune, January 31, 2021.

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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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