tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81853112381711738492024-03-23T06:15:19.786-04:00Brinkerhoff Brimmeth OverPercolation for my website,
robertbrinkerhoff.comRobert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.comBlogger231125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-29405639369365478392022-03-02T09:29:00.001-05:002022-03-02T09:29:24.075-05:00New Blog Site!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://robertbrinkerhoff.com" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1473" data-original-width="1474" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgE8-Emx4CUPA_obNz5_UmwCBg-RFI_KWSGrphMMEjkeEDXUkI38fKztb0MlDbjTP7RX9ovxzouGtBzj7Dh7zD6JTIpbJuFY2FTXNfXEmU3-v8tsgB04DIptcgWAToHxkeA6LZrV6xwsGWlTHOTAZ4LvnmceLcRwLyz8tm13G5cU5GymE9WgYyagph1bg=w346-h346" width="346" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">I've been blogging mostly about my Dante's Inferno project, so I've created a new blog that resides on my <a href="http://robertbrinkerhoff.com" target="_blank">website</a>—all Dante, at least so far. The Inferno project is documented in full at that link.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://robertbrinkerhoff.com/blog">Please take a look</a> and subscribe, if you're inclined.</span></div><br /> <p></p>Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-31923507204169771672021-02-17T08:13:00.004-05:002021-03-11T09:43:03.882-05:00<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzOyZtfkXDAW-3RJgqNXa0hJ57hFN9jROtTTsxwnIb9WplkjzJu5rWI_TAgQ2dyfXPLkI7VcGingZFAak4q8gz0Ikz-XfU_qbPiYP8YFqFDUI39jRwJYyYN001HfMVAQdLsrCPpRc5xI12/s1500/Inferno_XXVII.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1005" data-original-width="1500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzOyZtfkXDAW-3RJgqNXa0hJ57hFN9jROtTTsxwnIb9WplkjzJu5rWI_TAgQ2dyfXPLkI7VcGingZFAak4q8gz0Ikz-XfU_qbPiYP8YFqFDUI39jRwJYyYN001HfMVAQdLsrCPpRc5xI12/s320/Inferno_XXVII.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno XXVII: The Taking of Guido da Montefeltro<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Ink on paper, 2021<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><i><span style="color: #262626;">22 x 15”</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; line-height: 20px;">Inferno XXVII continues the theme of souls entrapped in flames, when Dante and Virgil meet Guido da Montefeltro, a Ghibelline captain of the 13th century whose opposition to the Church (the Guelphs) was reconciled many years later when he became a Franciscan monk. Having steered clear of military conflict for several years, Guido was eventually cajoled by Pope Boniface VIII to rejoin the fray, this time against the Ghibelline army he once led. Ultimately, at his death, the faithful Franciscan was poised to be spirited away to heaven by St. Francis, but the angel of darkness appeared to intervene at the last moment, sealing his fate in hell, which we read about in Inferno XXVII. In this drawing, Guido is seen in deathly repose at the bottom, with Francis at the top of image. Sandwiched in between—in Escher-like, figure-ground interplay—is the angel of darkness, with Boniface's tiara crowning his hideous face. The latter touch was an instinctual move to bring the evil Pope into the picture.</span></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">I have seven more drawings to complete in this series. The project began almost five years ago, and I'm ashamed that it's taking so long to finish. No excuses, but the deeper my descent into hell, the more involved the drawings become, and I sense that I will really need to improve with each to ensure that I wrap it up with a fitting crescendo of density and pathos. In this sense my process, although plodding and often really enjoyable, is a metaphor for Dante's journey. I do need to pick up the pace and now that I have left behind many years of administrative work I hope to dedicate all of my time this summer to finishing the remaining drawings. Each drawing can take days to complete, depending on the task I've created for myself, and I simply haven't had a lot of that unfettered time to get them done. An hour here or there truly breaks the momentum, so I need to find better ways to resume and set aside the work in fits and starts while still making progress. </span></div>Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-87301822735265065402021-02-13T09:25:00.003-05:002021-02-13T09:25:30.793-05:00New Drawing in Progress<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuVN4MotmIVA8cKa2H-ymrAMLKSCKZx5EFSLlBZyL9cTrj3iGn323GKSpVHyakKFnYgJE1GjNuC0EMvgyMFIJh4c5tZAiWCQFLrYnsZXvm3Nc8B6dzBovDzlb2bJZEZ0b_egR3UmmkYtTS/s2048/61D76222-5233-4933-B37F-ED576E575457_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuVN4MotmIVA8cKa2H-ymrAMLKSCKZx5EFSLlBZyL9cTrj3iGn323GKSpVHyakKFnYgJE1GjNuC0EMvgyMFIJh4c5tZAiWCQFLrYnsZXvm3Nc8B6dzBovDzlb2bJZEZ0b_egR3UmmkYtTS/s320/61D76222-5233-4933-B37F-ED576E575457_1_201_a.jpeg" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-6668290000861470552020-11-11T10:35:00.001-05:002020-11-11T10:35:36.224-05:00Hope.<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKZ8TPbFDPygibGl6ZRw2y6dyiZGqhjntH59RBm950pGD6tyuYCV-dZrcXNwTFLRapP3mryDgO9dyu85nDjQSRkLvBIf1ko8uxOVIZKqr2rvwpI_ANTInpR4hToCPWLFiwff8jEzE5vUE/s2048/Hope_Poster_FIN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1541" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKZ8TPbFDPygibGl6ZRw2y6dyiZGqhjntH59RBm950pGD6tyuYCV-dZrcXNwTFLRapP3mryDgO9dyu85nDjQSRkLvBIf1ko8uxOVIZKqr2rvwpI_ANTInpR4hToCPWLFiwff8jEzE5vUE/w301-h400/Hope_Poster_FIN.jpg" width="301" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-53231010428553434362019-12-23T14:36:00.000-05:002019-12-23T14:37:32.769-05:00Inferno XXVI: Bifurcations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; line-height: 20px;">Inferno XXVI hosts a dramatic encounter between Dante, Virgil and the doubly-entrapped shades of Ulysses and Diomedes, who are bound together in a single flame. </span><span style="line-height: 20px;">(fig. 16) </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; line-height: 20px;">Theirs is the most conspicuous of many thousands that feebly illuminate the terrain, and they are imprisoned within a forked tongue of fire for various sins: primarily the ingenious plot to inhabit the Trojan Horse with insidious raiders, and plotting the ingenious Trojan Horse raid, stealing the cherished cult statue of Pallas Athen, the talisman of Troy. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">The administrative work I've been doing for the past 2.5 years has been rewarding in many ways. I have certainly learned a tremendous lot about how the college operates, and have gotten to know the work of many extraordinary people. Most of all, I've been honored with the privilege to support the continuation of their good work, as teachers and artists. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">It's been a little tough to switch gears from full-time dean—signing papers, settling disagreements and sitting in meetings—to resourceful artist with only a couple of spare hours a night to invest in the latter. The nature of the project I am doing hasn't allowed a ton of time to just sit and draw, to make mistakes, to start over. A drawing in this series can take days to complete, from sketch to finish, and nabbing an hour here and there isn't really the way to accomplish that. Still, I can only blame myself, because I've never learned to flip the switch from work to artistic pursuit, from left-to right-brained immersion on such short order. The job will end on 30 June 2020, however, as I have decided to forego renewal of the contract for another term, and return to teaching and studio work.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I had not been able to return to the series of drawings in a full year, due to work commitments, and I produced this drawing of Ulysses and Diomedes while teaching in Rome in summer 2019. Through an odd set of coincidences, I happened to visit the beach at Sperlonga, near Rome, and learned that the sculpture of Ulysses that I used as reference for his face in this drawing was originally located in the grotto of Tiberius, located only steps from my spot on the beach; and a later visit to the Vatican Museums brought me face-to-face with the sculpture of Athena that I used for another significant element of the image, the Palladium. Synchronicity endures. My life and that of Dante are intertwined in astonishing ways, and my process is likewise a humble mirror of his narrative—both personal and poetic.</span><span style="font-family: "adobe caslon pro" , serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-74493709933652954682019-12-23T14:35:00.000-05:002019-12-23T18:15:53.495-05:00Inferno XXV: The Pleasures of Research<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><br /></i></b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>Inferno XXV: Cacus, The Centaur</i></b></span><br />
<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Ink on Paper, 2018</span></i></b><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">For a moment in Inferno XXV, Dante catches sight of the monster Cacus, an Ancient Greek monster who is embodied as a centaur in Dante's conception. A spectacular horror, we are introduced to Cacus, insane with rage and covered with snakes and a winged, fire-breathing dragon on his back. </span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Herein lies one of the most profound examples of the pleasures that research has brought me in pursuit of this project. I have discovered a great many things in while preparing myself for this work, and again in writing about it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I lived for a time in Rome, walking regularly by the beautiful, round temple of Hercules Victor, a referential tribute to his defeat of Cacus, who not only stole the cattle of Hercules but who had a terrible history of eating human flesh and tacking the heads of his victims to the entrance to his cave. Though a character from Greek mythology, he was said to have lived in pre-Roman times, near the site of Hercules' temple. He was not a centaur, but your garden variety, fire-breathing monster—the terror of the neighborhood until Hercules set him straight.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Now, I walked by this spot all the time because it was on the edge of my neighborhood, and I was well aware of its association with Hercules, but only through research for this drawing did I discover so many dimensions of its history—the tether to Greek myth, enduring in Roman culture; the history of the site as the ancient cattle market in Rome; and the engagement of one of my favorite boyhood heroes, the brutal genius—half-god, half-man—named Hercules.</span></span><br />
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-65474231991260965892019-12-23T14:27:00.000-05:002019-12-23T18:14:12.234-05:00Inferno XXIV: Demise and Deja Vu<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno XXIV: Vanni Fucci's Horrific Cycle</span></i></b><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">We remain in the eighth circle of Hell, and here we meet the thief, Vanni Fucci di Pistoia, who is—in the tradition of Sisyphus and Prometheus—destined for all eternity to die and be reborn in an endless cycle of terror and pain.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Vanni Fucci is one of the more vulgar characters in Dante's Hell, and he suffers one of the most diabolical and exhaustively terrible fates in the story. Before boldly directing crude gestures to God, he explains to Dante that he once stole from his church, only to blame it on someone else, who was put to death in his stead. Without fail Vanni Fucci is now ensnared in a cycle of strangling entanglement with snakes, who bite him ferociously. Immediately, he bursts into flame and disintegrates, turning to ash—only to be immediately reborn in order to endure the same terrible fate all over again. This happens forever.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">The mythic correlation to both Sisyphus and Prometheus is striking, with the latter in particular bearing a significant similarity—both symbolically and literally— to Vanni Fucci's predicament. In both stories the victim is a thief who, having stolen from the divine, must not only endure torture for all time, but must repeat his own history of terror and pain. There may be no more harrowing fate than to be subject to death, with the guarantee that it will happen over again. PTSD to the max.</span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-52045696260322504302019-12-23T14:24:00.000-05:002019-12-23T18:13:20.279-05:00Inferno XXIII: Cloaks of Gold and Lead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_TjF1gogmmX4hgmQyKvEN2fxJzEuWNpioTvnLxbCJvnbycGToddzIUodz9ECrgGh9gLdao4Xy4sR2FHyg1GQPD726e1bglaJh7FG8JvQ_5YWSBvyWyz8-8-MXW8NvQJd9rGlA_bFbS9Jn/s1600/Divine+Comedy+24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1081" data-original-width="1600" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_TjF1gogmmX4hgmQyKvEN2fxJzEuWNpioTvnLxbCJvnbycGToddzIUodz9ECrgGh9gLdao4Xy4sR2FHyg1GQPD726e1bglaJh7FG8JvQ_5YWSBvyWyz8-8-MXW8NvQJd9rGlA_bFbS9Jn/s400/Divine+Comedy+24.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno XXIII: The Hypocrite Friars</span></span></i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Ink on paper, 2019<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">After squeaking by the infuriated demons of the last scene, whose raging is carried forth in Canto XXIII, Dante and Virgil encounter a solemn group of friars, whose cloaks of glittering gold are lined with dense lead. These are hypocrites, destined to bear their embattled duplicity as garments.</span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Perhaps one of the most brilliant moments of <i>contrapasso</i> in <b><i>L'Inferno</i></b> happens here, when Dante and Virgil engage in dialogue with a group of treacherous friars who embody one of Dante's greatest peeves: hypocrisy. Two of the more politically empowered of these friars, Godenti Catalano and Loderingo, favored the Guelphs in Florence, and this resulted in the destruction of Ghibelline </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">(specifically, Uberti) </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">homes in the Gardingo neighborhood of Florence. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Dante's genius for "just-dessertism" is in full flower in Canto XXIII, as he cloaks these unfortunate, once "jovial" friars in glimmering <span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">gold, presenting an outward appearance of brilliance and opulence, while internally miring them in lead linings. He takes delight in punishing his transgressive cast of characters with such exquisite contrapassi. Never has "the punishment fits the crime" been more aptly applied.</span></span><br />
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-46839054436320078912017-11-19T17:56:00.000-05:002019-12-23T18:12:45.845-05:00Inferno XXII: The Falling Man.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh46amQeluacaPGm4J1Bej-Rv_6kwgYBL1-hCZKGchU3IBx9WnrS9ZE-31wSFNRa3uuAS_zrGK9leFcgFRVYG43SGNnaw57-26ehjKkIGE7pHIKqQ9NIJ_4o3nlrVCjqGNM8TA0kOcNOeCE/s1600/LaDivinaCommedia23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1058" data-original-width="1600" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh46amQeluacaPGm4J1Bej-Rv_6kwgYBL1-hCZKGchU3IBx9WnrS9ZE-31wSFNRa3uuAS_zrGK9leFcgFRVYG43SGNnaw57-26ehjKkIGE7pHIKqQ9NIJ_4o3nlrVCjqGNM8TA0kOcNOeCE/s400/LaDivinaCommedia23.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno XXII: Ciampolo and the Malebranche<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Ink on paper, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Their tour of the eighth circle continues in Canto XXII, and Dante and Virgil attempt to stall the brutal mauling of a sinner, plucked from the tarry pitch below, by asking questions about his background. While Virgil quizzes him, the antagonistic demons cut bits of flesh from the pitiful soul, but he ultimately escapes their escalating torture when he distracts them sufficiently—leaping from the cliffs to the black goo below. The scene is summed up at the end of the canto:</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">The
Navarrese chose his time well;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">He
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">He
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">I remember having dreams as a kid in which I was hiding from something—a monster or some other menace (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN2a5zGmBPI" target="_blank">Blacula</a>, or <a href="https://www.biography.com/.image/t_share/MTE5NTU2MzE2MzA4MTQ1Njc1/charles-manson-9397912-2-402.jpg" target="_blank">Charles Manson</a>, glaring with his coal black eyes as he did in news photographs, were perennial threats). In these dreams I was always wedged in the triangle of space behind an open door, looking through the crack on the hinged side. While safe for the moment, the threat was imminent and I was terrified of being discovered, and then God-knows-what. The primal instinct to flee overpowered the rational need to remain in hiding and the decisive moment always came. As the perp came closer I would leap from my hiding place, arms and limbs flailing in self-defense, screaming like mad to scare him off. I would then find myself awake.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">The last bit of Canto XXII of <i>L'Inferno</i> evoked immediately a now famous image from 9-11 known as <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a48031/the-falling-man-tom-junod/" target="_blank">The Falling Man</a>. Having lingo ago reached meme status, I'm a little sheepish about my exploitation of it for this drawing, but it remains potent to me so I wanted to refer to it. The image is that of a man plummeting head first from the World Trade Center tower, his arms to his sides, his left leg elegantly crooked to lend graceful proportion. The beauty of the image belies its horrific narrative. Moments before, the man was on the ledge of the building, undoubtedly agonizing in the face of a terrifying decision: jump or suffer an excruciating death by incineration. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">I like illustrating most when I am able to anticipate the visual literacy shared by most people and yet leave a few secrets to be discovered in the process of deciphering an image. Depending on this for dialogue with a viewer's memory and expecting their semiotic response system to engage, enabling them to answer the questions I am posing, can be deeply gratifying. This image unfolded that way, and—<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BTDCk2NA7vE/?taken-by=housemessenger" target="_blank">despite its tedious making</a>—I really enjoyed all phases of its development.</span></span><br />
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-35257093978099923812017-11-11T15:58:00.002-05:002017-11-11T15:58:54.144-05:00Inferno XXI: "He made a trumpet of his rump."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMUCXUhJ9kdTPX5seWfVFd9tbZNm776TE_7nmG6fRaPzVNPdtjmjet9WbHtLNXjhpza-_i33A-iuX8KSEJXB0b5vg4kSeJhmnt9qSo-IbR9skn18BiJdEQ29UQkW5d9aCCei52k62iaDlh/s1600/LaDivinaCommedia22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1071" data-original-width="1600" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMUCXUhJ9kdTPX5seWfVFd9tbZNm776TE_7nmG6fRaPzVNPdtjmjet9WbHtLNXjhpza-_i33A-iuX8KSEJXB0b5vg4kSeJhmnt9qSo-IbR9skn18BiJdEQ29UQkW5d9aCCei52k62iaDlh/s320/LaDivinaCommedia22.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno XXI: The Malebranche<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Ink on paper, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>In the fifth ditch (or malebolgia) of the eighth circle of Inferno, Dante and Virgil are immersed in tarry darkness, which—while unnerving—provides cover from a comically furious band of nine demons known as the Malebranche. Hidden behind the rocks, Dante is eventually revealed when Virgil addresses the rowdy brood. They threaten to attack but are stopped by Malacoda, their leader, as he engages Virgil in conversation, and even offers to accompany our heroes on the next leg of their journey. Much excitement ensues and their leader releases an explosive burst of gas from his butt or, in Dante's words, "ed elli </i></span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>avea del cul fatto trombetta" (he made a trumpet of his rump):</i></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Per l’argine sinistro volta dienno;</b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta</b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno;</b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.</b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>They wheeled about along the left dike,</b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>but not before each had thrust his tongue between </b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>his teeth in signal to their leader;</b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>and he made a trumpet of his rump.</b></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">I grew up in a politically liberal yet sexually repressive household. My father and mother were born in 1918 and 1920, respectively, and I never saw them display affection with enjoyment or abandon. My father would arrive home from work at 5:00pm, and meet my mother in the kitchen. She would greet him cheerfully, and as their lips would touch, his gaze would meet mine with a furtive look of embarrassment, or even panic. When we watched the <i>Jackie Gleason Show</i>, with its sexy chorus girls in skimpy costumes, my dad would mutter "nothing but bums, all of them." He was fearful and disdainful of all things carnal, as was my mother, who was raised in a superstitious, Irish-Catholic household in Boston, with the remnants of 19th century moral codes guiding her conscience ("Marguerite, you know that the Blessed Mother frowns on little girls who whistle"). She squelched my own sexual expression early on in life (without revealing too much here's a snapshot: little boy, boner, bed) with a fierce glare.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I am always impressed and a little surprised when I encounter Canto XXI of <i>L'Inferno</i>, wherein the pious Dante delivers with gusto the imagery from the passage above. His delight in vulgarity is infectious, even if he disguises it by presenting it as the shameful product of a marauding band of demons. The plain truth is that Dante periodically indulges in vulgar bits of narrative, just as Chaucer did several decades later in <i>The Canterbury Tales</i>. Here's an excerpt from <i>The Miller's Tale</i>:</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i>This Nicholas just then let fly a fart</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i>As loud as it had been a thunder-clap,</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i>And well-nigh blinded Absalom, poor chap;</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i>But he was ready with his iron hot</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><i>And Nicholas right in the arse he got.</i></b></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">It's a dirty shame that things which come naturally to us as a species—the smelly, comically sonic marvels of flatulence, the unbridled enjoyment of animalistic sexual encounter, naughty delight in a dirty joke, unbridled promiscuity, empowerment to identify our own gender and sexual orientation —are arbitrarily relegated to the shadows of sin. Less than 500 years ago our carnal nature was factual. It was expected of us. We reveled in it. Michel Foucault wrote extensively on the subject of changing sexual mores and the first volume of his <i>History of Sexuality</i> begins with a bang: </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">“At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain frankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codes regulating the coarse, the obscene, and the indecent were quite lax compared to those of the nineteenth century. It was a time of direct gestures, shameless discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults: it was a period when bodies “made a display of themselves.”</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Reading Dante offers a glimpse of humanity's relationship with the illicit in medieval times, underscoring the notion that, whatever our proclivities or indulgences, we were born this way.</span><br />
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-89634532070450573562017-11-09T21:42:00.000-05:002017-11-09T22:05:26.534-05:00Inferno XX: The Diviners.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Dante arrives at a chasm which is "bathed in tears of agony," and beholds a gloomy, glacial procession of sinners. These are the diviners: magicians, soothsayers, fortune tellers, and military strategists who dared predict the future. Their perverse punishment is to possess a single mode of expression—incessant tears—while walking backwards with their heads twisted around.</i></span></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">We live where our attention is. When we direct our attention fully to the present moment, we are fully alive. —Eknath Easwaran </span></b></i><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The medieval church considered divination a form of heresy, usurping the omniscience of God as the sole author of fate. Dante's diviners are an absurd brood, weeping in an excruciatingly slow procession while walking backwards, with their heads twisted 180º to enable them to see where they are going.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm the least qualified person to discourse on present mindfulness. A consummate worrier, I've nevertheless made an effort, but failed, to "live in the present" over the years. Sure, I believe that the future is not yet a reality and the past cannot be changed, but I spend a lot of time wondering how the consequences of my past idiocy will haunt me in the future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">For years I had a couple of anxiety dreams about the future. One dream was so exquisitely metaphorical that I actually cherished it when it recurred several times, even though it terrified me when it inhabited my sleep. It involved a tornado on the distant horizon, a sure sign of impending doom and destruction. Sometimes I was in a car, and other times I was in some sort of structure—a glass skyscraper, a house, looking out a kitchen window. In each instance I was engrossed in some conversation or some other activity involving other people when my attention would be drawn to the window. Looking out, I would catch sight of the ominous ribbon of black dust and debris, always on the horizon (it had to remain there—otherwise it would be about the present). I would always wake before it tore my life apart.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The second dream was also a recurring narrative that haunted my sleep. It was much more disturbing than the tornado dream, and seemed to be as much about the past as it was about the future. I would find myself in a deep pit somewhere, unable to get out and eventually made aware that I was in the grave with someone I had killed, albeit accidentally. Panic would inevitably ensue when I realized that the body would soon be buried by others, whose voices I could hear approaching from the landscape above. I would soon be discovered and punished, a victim of my own transgressions.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">I haven't had either of these dreams for many years, and I do think they stopped around the time that I came out to my kids and separated from the wonderful woman to whom I was married for 20 years. No more fear of consequences for that horrific, unintended crime (which was a metaphor for the secrets I was keeping, I'm sure). To this day, when I reflect on the realism of that dream, I have to remind myself that I'd never harm a fly, and that my future no longer includes fear of being outed as a metaphorical murderer. </span><br />
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-61496401351108436722017-08-09T22:01:00.000-04:002017-08-25T19:27:22.091-04:00Inferno XIX: Comeuppance.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno XIX: The Simonists<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Ink on paper, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Our heroes have arrived at the lip of the third <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malebolge" target="_blank">bolgia</a></b> in the eighth circle of hell. Looking across the expanse of stone, they see spirits buried upside down in holes in the ground—dozens of legs kicking spasmodically as the soles of their feet are licked by oily flames. They are, no doubt, very uncomfortable, having been shoved head first into stone. These are the simonists, people who used ecclesiastical positions of power for personal gain, and among them is a particularly noteworthy offender.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>"Sometimes, when I lack the motivation to get out of bed and start the day, I remember revenge..."</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Thus spake a particularly witty friend on Facebook last week, delighting me with his self-mocking spitefulness. I'm happy to boast that I'm not a vindictive person, but I do love a good tale of revenge in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/list/ls000023819/" style="font-style: normal;" target="_blank">film</a> and <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/the-7-best-revenge-stories-in-literature/" style="font-style: normal;" target="_blank">literature</a>. Farrah Fawcett in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trhDAL-3V78&spfreload=10" target="_blank"><i>Extremities</i></a>, imprisoning her vile attacker in a fireplace. Hansel and Gretel, giving the momentarily clueless witch a run for her money into a blazing oven. Hamlet, hell-bent and psychotically obsessed with avenging his father's fratricide. And of course, there's Steven King's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xe0BayQQuc" target="_blank">Carrie</a>, launching a blazing, telekinetic massacre in a high school gym while drenched on stage in pig's blood. You go, girl.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Dante sometimes seems all about retribution, and—like many before and after him—he deftly utilizes narrative fiction to skewer his nemeses, wresting complete control in life's infinite power struggle by indulging himself and his reader in wicked comeuppance for transgressors. Dante delights in the imaginary punishment of his contemporaries by an omnipotent God, and their humiliation is made all the more public in the incremental distribution of his poem to the populace.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">It's no coincidence that the simonists are buried in holes that resemble baptismal fonts. This instrument of purification and rebirth is perfectly suited to Dante's exquisite irony, and the lead recipient of this punishment is none other than Pope Nicholas III, who foreshadows the eventual arrival of (in Dante's eyes) an even more deserving papal cad—Pope Bonafice, the political leader of the Black Guelphs, the group that banished Dante from his beloved Florence. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Comeuppance is a word perfectly suited for the concept of exacted revenge, and Dante masterfully guides it in Canto XIX, as things are turned around, over and upside down with cruel yet delightful irony. </span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-36975602667747375012017-04-23T18:17:00.001-04:002017-04-23T18:17:36.836-04:00Inferno XVIII: Fecal Matter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno XVIII: Fecal Matter<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Ink on paper, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Dante has arrived in the eighth
circle of Inferno, in the first of ten pouches (ditches) called the malebolge
(translated as “evil pouches”). Here he witnesses a band of panderers
(pimps, flatterers, et al), tormented by demons as they move in procession along the floor of the valley His gaze is arrested by the sight of one pathetic
sinner whom he recognizes, covered with a thick layer of excrement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Dante’s cruel sarcasm is on full
display in his exchange with Alessio Interminei of Lucca, a flatterer who asks
Dante why he feels compelled to stare him down more than the others. The retort
is mean-spirited and antagonistic: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">"Why, if I remember,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I saw you once before with
dry hair.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">You are Alessio Interminei
of Lucca,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>so I study you more than
all the others.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Dante’s towering literary
reputation sometimes overshadows his arrogance and cruelty. He can be a tool, but he’s still
funny as shit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">This is a shitty drawing in more
ways than one. I’m pleased enough with the bottom half, but the top surrenders
itself to whimsy, my eternal predilection. Not that whimsy can't be terrifying. Just ask the two foolish children who, lured by promises of treacle tarts by the androgynous, superficially mirthful Child Catcher, met sudden, horrifying entrapment in <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUnhfvGdmmw&t=15s&spfreload=10" target="_blank">Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang</a>. </i></span></span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">The bottom of my drawing is certainly whimsical,
but there is to me more perversity in the characterizations and the way lines,
visual hierarchy, and other formal/design decisions contribute to a sense of severe agony in its figures. I need to do something about the demons—they’re a bit
more like characters from </span><i style="color: #262626; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65t-OzhlmvE" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show</span></a></i><span style="color: #262626; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"> than the fierce
antagonists they’re meant to be. Maybe I’ll simply obfuscate them in an inky
cloud. Things are scarier when you can’t quite see them.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I need to study how imagery evolves
this way for me, how some parts go wrong while other parts seem to fall in
place almost effortlessly (although I should be careful to say that nothing
ever feels effortless); how sketches sometimes seem more essential and honest
than finished drawings or, conversely, how finished drawings finesse the seeds
of simple ideas into more sophisticated form. I had a wonderful student once,
<a href="http://mattleines.com/" target="_blank">Matt Leines</a>, who had undertaken an independent study project with me. We met
every week to discuss his ideas, and I recall at one point he came to me with
an expression of frustration. He had a sketch—small and in a notebook—and he
had a finished illustration—a bit larger. His question was simple: “why doesn’t
this look like that?” In other words, what was it about the sketch that he had
been unable to apprehend in the finished image? We went round and round
and—apart from the typical technical explanations (eg.: perhaps his use of
mediums didn’t translate well at larger scale and on a different substrate?) I
think we ultimately decided that sometimes the honest impulse for mark-making,
the exploration of form and meaning in its most naive, open and meandering mode
of drawing and painting, is impossible to replicate. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">So, some things turn to shit.</span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-33286779674795721332017-04-07T22:19:00.000-04:002017-04-07T22:19:43.319-04:00Inferno XVII: The Face of A Just Man<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Inferno XVII: The Face of A Just Man</span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ink on paper, 2016</span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">In this canto, Dante and Virgil meet Geryon, the winged monster of fraud, who rises from the abyss to transport them downward, from the edge of towering cliffs to the eighth circle of Inferno.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geryon" target="_blank">Geryon</a> is an ancient mythic character whose early appearance in Greek myth bears little resemblance to the 14th century monster Dante created for Canto XVII of L’Inferno. Often freely transforming characters from history and literature (<a href="http://robertbrinkerhoff.blogspot.com/2017/01/inferno-v-king-minos-adjudicator.html" target="_blank">King Minos of Crete, for example, in Canto V</a>, is transmogrified into a beastly guardian of hell with a serpent’s tail) Dante’s poetic license never fails to deliver with absolute potency the moral lessons he most wants to convey. And, truth be told, it’s easy to accept that once a character enters the underworld, just about anything can happen. Kings grow tails and mythic Greek monsters change costume.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The story is about to dedicate itself to the world of sins collectively known as fraud, a particularly detestable offense in Dante’s estimation. The eighth circle features the Malebolge, a sequence of ten ditches wherein fester perpetrators of all classes of fraud: panderers and seducers; flatterers, simoniacs (those who sold ecclesiastical favors); sorcerers; barrators (corrupt politicians); hypocrites; thieves; counsellors of fraud; sowers of discord; and falsifiers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Geryon is described as the “foul effigy of fraud,” and this is expressed in his chimeric corporeality: he has a reptilian body, lavishly decorated and resembling a middle-eastern carpet. His arms are hairy and a deadly scorpion’s tail is concealed at the end of his enormous body. But his most fraudulent attribute is his deceptive visage: “the face of a just man.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Throughout <i>La Commedia</i>, Dante integrates significant use of the number three in imagery, structure and narrative. Robert Hollander brilliantly discusses Geryon as one of the most cleverly crafted metaphors of the poem: “This embodiment of fraud is thus presented as the counterfeit of Christ, three-in-one rather than one-in-three.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I really loved making this drawing—the scale of the monster is extremely exaggerated in my conception, much bigger than I’ve seen him represented in the precedents I researched. And, on a technical note, somehow the pen behaved itself (for once) and I was able to pull it off to my satisfaction.</span></span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-66431798004506084142017-04-01T22:02:00.000-04:002017-04-01T22:02:29.014-04:00Inferno XVI: Getting Personal with the Sodomites<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Inferno XVI: Getting Personal with the Sodomites</span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Continuing his engagement with the depraved yet beloved souls in the Third Ring of the Seventh Circle, Dante chats with some comical characters, a trio of Florentine sodomites.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Brunetto Latini is left behind, and Virgil encourages Dante to stop and talk to a group of sodomites whose eccentric behavior is alternately absurd and endearing. The main speaker identifies himself as Jacopo Rusticucci, and his friends as Guido Guerra and Tegghiaio Aldobrandi. Highly regarded by Dante in life, these three Florentines were Guelphs who discouraged engagement in battle. The trio behaves with erratic absurdity, joining hands and running in circles as a sort of human wheel as they attempt to dodge the burning flakes of flame. They’re badly charred from their eternal exposure to fire. They question Dante about the state of Florentine politics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Curiously, <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~dante/ebdsa/rh.html" target="_blank">as Robert Hollander points out</a>, it’s surprising and very odd that Dante once again treats a group of typically reviled sinners (sodomites) with such affection and respect, just as he did Brunetto Latini in Canto XV. It’s a puzzling aspect of the narrative, this graciousness bestowed upon homosexuals, but there you have it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I made two versions of this drawing, the first (below, the only bit of it left after destroying it in my use of the ugly mess of paper as an ink blotter) being a complete failure after two full days of toil. I’m still a little unsure why I disliked it so much, but my conviction was profound enough to compel me to start again. I suspect my displeasure came from the lack of energy in the composition—the three guys simply formed a circle dropped in the center of the image. It was also a little too silly in my opinion, despite the relative levity of the scene described by Dante. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">As a 21st century sodomite, I’m much happier with the second, final iteration (top), perhaps because it became an opportunity for some personal critical commentary—a little jab at the bearded Boston bros who desperately cultivate an A-list image. Having hacked away of late at the jungle that is gay dating I think I’ve developed an ability to spot these guys pretty quickly. Most have the requisite muscles and beards—slaves to the trends that elicit a sort of conformist desire. Their Instagram feeds possess an exquisitely balanced ratio of sexy photos of themselves in the gym, sensitive shots of them lovingly playing with dogs or nieces or nephews alongside nocturnal images of Ptown weekends with the boys. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Lots of teeth and tank tops. They overcompensate with abundant expressions of interest in sports and beer. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">They seem friendly, happy. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">They describe themselves openly as “laid back,” but their grimaces vaguely indicate a deeper underlying anxiety. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;">What draws these men to places like Boston, with its competitive, cold, gay subculture? A desperate need for tribal belonging paired with a desire to be desired? Hell bent on transcending, once and for all, lonely childhoods filled with rejection? Tough to say, but so many of these men seem damaged by the time they’re 40, eating themselves alive as they inch toward late middle age.</span></span></span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-73869668807194285892017-03-24T07:32:00.001-04:002017-03-24T07:32:40.376-04:00Inferno XV: An Unexpected Reunion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Inferno XV: An Unexpected Reunion</span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ink on paper, 2016</span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Once Virgil has completed his lengthy parable of the Old Man of Crete, our heroes forge ahead in the seventh circle, eventually crossing paths with a gang of sodomites—those who have perpetrated violence against nature. At this juncture, Dante exchanges greetings with the mentor and guardian of his youth, Brunetto Latini.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;">Inferno XV features one of the oddest and least understood placements of personalities. This is the realm of the sodomites, those nasty gents whose buggery has doomed them to the scalding sands of the seventh circle, eternally dodging flakes of flame that rain from the sky. Dante is shocked to encounter a beloved figure from his past, a gentleman named Brunetto Latini, who guided Dante for many years, intellectually, socially and morally. He greets Dante with a mix of joy, affection and desperation. But why is Brunetto—a revered and beloved figure in the life of Dante—punished so cruelly? He is condemned to a fate reserved for sodomites and yet there is no historical evidence that he was himself homosexual, nor is there any revealing discussion of this confusing placement embedded in the dialogue.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The conception of this illustration came very naturally, as the starting point is rich: the potent irony of Dante, once the student, reversing roles with a former authoritative father figure (and I have to admit that I wondered if Brunetto’s appearance here was a way of hinting that some previously concealed and inappropriate man-boy dynamic existed); the somewhat desperate way that Brunetto reaches up to grasp Dante’s robe, and the possible erotic inferences in that movement. I felt as if my task here was to reference an unspoken (and still uncertain) past between the two characters, avoiding explicit commitment to anything sketchy but leaving open a few possibilities. </span></span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-88100436146031083282017-03-06T10:11:00.000-05:002017-03-06T10:11:01.447-05:00Inferno XIV: The Old Man of Crete<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno XIV: The Old Man of Crete</span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">A fantastic interlude occurs in the fourteenth canto of L’Inferno as Virgil revives imagery from Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, an image of a giant statue made from various materials, from precious and strong on the top to crumbling clay at the bottom.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">After leaving the Forest of Suicides Dante and Virgil traverse the burning sands of the the seventh circle of hell. Their conversation is set aside for a time as Virgil relates the allegory of the Old Man of Crete, an image borrowed from the second chapter of the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_2" target="_blank">Book of Daniel</a></i>, in which the great King Nebudchadnezzar is visited by a dream of a giant statue, metaphorically composed of various materials—strong to weak, precious to worthless. In Virgil’s description the statue is an enormous colossus, emerging from the side of Mount Ida in Crete. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">The statue’s back faces Egypt, heretofore the world’s dominant society, and looks to Rome in deference to Christian rule. As a symbol of humanity’s crumbling moral and political fortitude it has a head of gold, arms and breast made of silver, bronze abdomen and thighs, and iron legs. His right foot, upon which he rests most of his weight, is made of crumbling, kiln baked clay, a symbol of the deteriorating institution of the medieval Catholic Church. He cries tears (through cracks in his body, not as I have depicted it in the illustration) which on the ground below create the four rivers of Inferno: Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">This is my favorite drawing so far, in part because of the sheer complexity of the image I needed to make. I relied a bit on ancient conceptions of Nebudchadnezzar is developing the costume and styling of hair and beard (see below), and really enjoyed interpreting the various active aspects of the image, finding concise and iconic ways to indicate is gaze, the tears, the geography, and materiality.</span></span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-1346660922598521102017-02-18T17:40:00.000-05:002017-02-18T17:40:15.177-05:00Inferno XIII: The Forest of Suicides<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">In the second ring of the seventh circle of hell, Virgil encourages Dante to pluck a twig from a thorn tree. Our hero is shocked to discover that the tree is an unnamed suicide, whose plaintive cries and oozing black blood reveal the collective fate of the entire forest.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">As Dante and Virgil enter the second of three rings in the Circle of the Violent, they encounter the fate of those who do violence to themselves. Disembodied moans surround them and Virgil tells Dante that if he were to pluck a twig from one of the mangled trees, he might learn the story.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dante does so, and—weeping with despair and oozing black blood—the tree ultimately unravels his story. He walked the earth as Pier della Vigna, counselor to the Emperor Frederick II. Vigna’s fated suicide was in a strange way the result of his fierce dedication and love for Frederick. His contemporaries grew envious of their close relationship and they circulated ugly rumors, causing him great shame, despair and—ultimately—death by his own hand.</span></span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-82475752249738261752017-02-12T21:16:00.000-05:002017-02-13T17:46:45.845-05:00Inferno XII: The Minotaur<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKDbDXn31jlhnqKdyjWXZMRBgllEzR1975JqezrX4HOwXwYIDttYhroqJkLocVwXH2bj3Meqc93SxvB-c-eKhPdvhd1OKMSaF-lc5EYnDLnPRyg4FWTBSZvG1S9AVdTVExXx9aBdKYSB1_/s1600/LaDivinaCommedia013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKDbDXn31jlhnqKdyjWXZMRBgllEzR1975JqezrX4HOwXwYIDttYhroqJkLocVwXH2bj3Meqc93SxvB-c-eKhPdvhd1OKMSaF-lc5EYnDLnPRyg4FWTBSZvG1S9AVdTVExXx9aBdKYSB1_/s400/LaDivinaCommedia013.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Ink on paper, 2016</b></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: xx-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In Canto XII, Dante and Virgil descend a steep slope and encounter at the bottom the mythic Minotaur, a beast with the head of a bull and body of a man. They are in the first ring of the Circle of the Violent, that which holds those who have committed violence against others.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The carnal essence of the Minotaur has alternately thrilled and terrified me since my earliest years. If there's an embodiment of the anxiety I experienced in a sexually repressed childhood (and much of adulthood) it would be this creature, with the physique of a dangerously muscled, hyper-masculine man, topped off with a smoky black bull's head, its dark features obscured by shadows and fur. The half-man/half-beast trope permeated my already anxious brain in many incarnations—including that of a lizard-man known as a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ-ATwRq5KY"><span style="color: #999999; font-kerning: none;">Gorn, battling Captain Kirk on Star Trek</span></a>. It was also fodder for a shitload of bad dreams. In retrospect, it's ridiculous that I would have been afraid of a guy in a plastic reptile suit, gingerly tossing fake punches at William Shatner, but it really did terrify me as a five year-old. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A little history: I grew up with crippling self-consciousness about my body. I thought that my morbid shyness about it was in some way an index to inferior masculinity, and it remained with me until I first had sex in college. I dreaded going to the beach, turned down many a pool party invitation. It's dissipated over the years and these days I'm pretty relaxed about my body (although there's certainly a ridiculously flawed logic to feeling less self-conscious about the body I have at 54). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">It started with my budding awareness of myself as a sexual being, I think, and that must have been at about age seven or eight. Growing up in a working class neighborhood in the South, I was at all times surrounded by boys who ran shirtless, dirty and unashamed of their bodies, and I both admired and feared their masculinity. Our equality (or perhaps my sense of intellectual superiority—I had what most of them didn't have, or at least I thought I did) existed only above the shoulders. No qualms about showing my head—it was a nice head, not bad looking, and it had nothing to do with sexuality. Funny things came out of my mouth from time-to-time, and I liked to show off with my face. The anxiety reached its peak in middle and high school years, when the same boys began to regard themselves as post-pubescent studs, exacerbating my insecurities.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">But when you put a fecund, ferocious animal's head on an already sexualized, brutal body—primed to do violence against sensitive men—you eradicate intellect. Its mind has been supplanted with thoughtless force, and that's pretty scary.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">When I began this drawing, I was reminded of the many depictions I had seen over the years, all of which used the body of the Minotaur to echo beastly savagery, a fitting partner to the bull's head. But, from the start, my impulse was to allow the body to be gently erotic, youthful and delicately drawn with lines that virtually disappear into the page. A grateful nod to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley"><span style="color: #999999; font-kerning: none;">Aubrey Beardsley</span></a>, absolutely, but I hope it's more than imitation of a stylistic convention. I suppose it could have been driven by a latent enjoyment of male nudity, or maybe it's a taming of the beast that scared me so much as a boy. Not sure.</span></span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-82510077130918992992017-02-11T07:42:00.002-05:002017-02-12T09:13:25.443-05:00Inferno XI: The Circle of the Violent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">Inferno XI: The </span><span style="color: #333333;">Circle</span><span style="color: #333333;"> of the Violent</span></b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Ink on paper, 2016</b></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Canto XI is one of the more pedantic parts of<b> L'Inferno</b>. Dante and Virgil descend to the seventh circle, housing those who have committed violent acts in life. It is subdivided into three smaller rings to accommodate sinners who are guilty of various classifications of violence.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #333333;">The </span><span style="color: #333333;">violent are punished in a variety of ways, depending on the transgressions they committed on earth. The seventh circle is sub-divided into three rings, each of which metes out a unique punishment. In the first ring, flooded by a river of blood, those who have committed violence against God and nature languish eternally. These are the plunderers, murderers and thieves who once corrupted the earth. The second ring is reserved for those who committed violence against themselves. Ingeniously, Dante conceives of a forest of suicides, wherein sinners have been transmogrified into talking, thorny threes, oozing blood. The third ring is for those who have perpetrated violence against their neighbors, including blasphemers and usurers, who suffer eternally in a desert of burning sands. Virgil explains that fraud is the greatest of sins in this circle, because it is the transgression most unique to mankind.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #333333;">The eleventh canto is unique in its instructive tone, with a large portion devoted to Virgil's explanation of how the circle is subdivided, classified and populated. I had a couple of goals in mind in structuring this picture: depiction of dialogue as key to its substance (the face-to-face, plain as day positioning of the two heroes),</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"> and a didactic representation of the three rings concentrically arranged—the river of blood, the suicide trees and the burning sands. I liken it to a conversation between teacher and pupil, poised before a diagram.</span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-12660339555137938552017-02-07T08:50:00.001-05:002017-02-12T09:13:38.820-05:00Inferno X: Farinata degli Uberti<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Inferno X: Farinata degli Uberti</b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b>Ink on paper, 2016</b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">In one of the most theatrical and haunting moments of L'Inferno, Dante is recognized by Farinata degli Uberti, a Florentine military leader and politician. In passing an expanse of flaming sarcophagi, Dante is stopped by the voice of a fellow Florentine, who recognizes his Tuscan accent. The two have a little chat about Florence, their families and honor.</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the sixth </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">circle</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> of Hell, we meet two of the heretics damned to remain there, including Farinata, whose family feuded with Dante's in Florence. Farinata recognizes Dante's Tuscan accent and, rising eerily from his sarcophagus, he engages him in debate about the honor of their respective families. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Early on, in the <a href="http://robertbrinkerhoff.blogspot.com/2017/01/inferno-iii-gates-of-hell-ink-on-paper.html" target="_blank">Gates of Hell</a> illustration, I first integrated an iconic reference to Florence in the <i>fleur-de-lis,</i> and I've attempted to revive it here in the silhouette created by Farinata's figure and the flames bursting from all sides of his body as he rises from the grave. </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Additionally, much has been made of the imagery Dante evokes in Farinata's pose. Seen from the waist up he has reminded many a scholar of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_Sorrows" target="_blank">Man of Sorrows</a>, a trope of the newly resurrected Christ, displaying the wounds of crucifixion with profound grief. In this image, Christ is represented as both dead (as man) and alive (as God).</span><br />
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-54449001078200820702017-02-02T11:03:00.000-05:002017-02-02T11:03:56.080-05:00Inferno IX: The Furies at the Gates of Dis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Inferno IX: The Furies at the Gates of Dis</span></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Dante and Virgil meet some formidable foes in the </span><a href="http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Erinyes.html" style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif; font-size: x-small;" target="_blank">furies</a><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">, Greek figures of vengeance with bat wings and snakes for hair, who carried instruments of torture and punishment: a whip, a chalice of poison and a torch. They hover at the gates of Dis, a walled city whose architecture included mosques (presumably inspired by Jerusalem of the 14th century). Because Islam was a relatively new religion—considered heresy in the eyes of the Church and was certainly not Christianity—its monuments were fitting features of a city whose primary descriptive elements contradict conceptions of Paradiso.</span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-63825827506546271122017-02-02T09:36:00.000-05:002017-02-02T09:36:02.621-05:00Inferno VIII: "Seize Filippo Argenti!"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="line-height: normal;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno VIII: "Seize </span></i></b></span><span style="font-family: "georgia", "times new roman", serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>Filippo Argenti!"</i></b></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif;">Dante encounters the Florentine politician </span><span style="font-family: "georgia", "times new roman", serif;">Filippo Argenti, and the wrathful cease their violent battle to consolidate their attacks on him. Argenti </span><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif;">then begins to tear at himself in due course, making quite a bloody scene.</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">The wrathful turn on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Argenti" target="_blank">Filippo Argenti</a>, but he literally beats them to the punch, tearing at his own flesh in a frenzy. In Bocaccio's <i>Decameron</i>, Argenti's ire is raised by a practical joke played by Ciacco, It's been said that Filippo Argenti once slapped Dante, that his brother had claimed Dante's possessions after his exile, and that the whole Argenti family opposed Dante's return. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Dante held some pretty big grudges and the Hollanders explain the character in this gloss from their edition of <i>L'Inferno.</i></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #45818e; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">“From the cries of others the reader finally learns the name of this sinner (Dante has known exactly who he is—see v. 39). Filippo Argenti was a Black Guelph from a powerful Florentine family. His real name was Filippo Adimari de’ Cavicciuoli, but he supposedly was known as Filippo Argenti because he had his horse’s hooves shod in silver (argento). A number of early commentators relate that his brother, Boccaccino, got hold of Dante’s possessions when the poet was exiled. If that is true, we have here a pretty clear case of authorial revenge upon a particularly hated enemy. See Francesco Forti, “Filippo Argenti,” ED, vol. 2, 1970, pp. 873–76.”</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #45818e; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Excerpt From: Dante, Robert Hollander & Jean Hollander. “The Inferno.” </span></i></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-76305077881315532362017-02-01T18:51:00.001-05:002017-02-01T18:51:37.665-05:00Inferno VII: The Wrathful Smite Each Other in the River Styx<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="line-height: normal;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Inferno VII: The Wrathful Smite Each Other in the River Styx</span></i></b></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Canto seven includes a scene of great ferocity, as those whose anger and spiteful nature guided them in life are condemned to beat, kick and bite one another while floating in the River Styx.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Dante had a ferocious sense of humor and this is evidenced throughout <i>L'Inferno</i>, wherein he subjects friend and foe alike to dreadful fates—punishments ranging from the inconvenient to the inhumane. He reserved a great deal of his ire for political rivals who </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">are eternally tortured, burned and humiliated in the bowels of Hell. A</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">nd, while he pitied the misfortune of the timing, he added historical figures who (sometimes merely because they were born before Christianity was in flower) were doomed to lives of boredom, aimlessness or shame. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">In one of my favorite scenes, dozens of furious souls are damned to partake in a raging battle in the bloody River Styx in Canto Seven. Arriving on the scene he sees all manner of chaos and carnage happening among the participants—an angry, mud-soaked mob immersed in the bloody waters, biting, kicking, drowning, punching and slapping each other. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">And yet, somehow this scene carries with it a terrific sense of absurdity, and it's tough to explain why. I suppose the very notion of people immersed in blood, attacking one another with utter malice is terrifying, but somehow it's worth a chuckle:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">In la palude va c’ha nome Stige</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">questo tristo ruscel, quand’ è disceso</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">al piè de le maligne piagge grige.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">E io, che di mirare stava inteso,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">vidi genti fangose in quel pantano,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">ignude tutte, con sembiante offeso.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Queste si percotean non pur con mano,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">ma con la testa e col petto e coi piedi,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">troncandosi co’ denti a brano a brano.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">_____________________________</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">It becomes a swamp by the name of Styx,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">this sorry brook, when it descends</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">at the foot of the malignant, grey shore.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">And I, who stood intent,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">saw muddy people in the quagmire,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">all of them naked and inflamed.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">They struck each other not only with their</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">hands, but with their heads, breasts and feet,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">and tore each other piece by piece with their teeth.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">For me, head butts are entirely reminiscent of the theatrical absurdity of pro wrestling, and Dante's refined and shocked countenance adds a bit more to the spectacle. </span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185311238171173849.post-50586713334093720742017-01-31T15:58:00.000-05:002017-02-11T11:00:02.873-05:00Inferno VI: Cerberus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><b>Inferno VI: Cerberus</b></i></span></span></div>
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In the sixth canto, Dante and Virgil encounter Cerberus—the three-headed hound of hell—who guards their passage with his fercious barking as he lords over miserable sinners, writhing in the mire below.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>* * *</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">This is a classic case of a good idea gone wrong. Its compositional lethargy is the result a my well-intended yet ill-conceived notion that, by placing Cerberus in the center of the image and surrounding him with a heaving mass of pathetic souls writhing on the ground beneath him, I could metaphorically represent the scene without showing the literal geography. I was trying to introduce some variety to my repertoire of visual presentation tropes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I think that most conceptions of this moment in <i>L'Inferno</i> picture Cerberus perched on a rock, enabling him to survey the bodies below while rain and huge hailstones pummel the crowd. But what I've created is not sufficiently depicting that dynamic and, instead, Cerberus is simply plopped in the center of the image, hovering sans gravity and sitting at the same time. The hail disappears when it's superimposed over the figures. So many bad decisions—this is definitely a "do-over" when I have time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">The saving grace for me is the figures themselves, which were a joy to draw in all their puling agony. Nothing like a little misery to brighten one's spirits.</span></div>
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Robert Brinkerhoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00083568482543682031noreply@blogger.com0