Inferno XXVI: Bifurcations

Inferno XXVI: Ulysses and Diomedes

Ink on paper, 2019

22 x 15”

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. (fig. 16) 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. 

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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. 

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.

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.

Inferno XXV: The Pleasures of Research

Inferno XXV: Cacus, The Centaur
Ink on Paper, 2018
22 x 15"

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. 

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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.

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.

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.

Inferno XXIV: Demise and Deja Vu

Inferno XXIV: Vanni Fucci's Horrific Cycle

Ink on Paper, 2018
22 x 15"

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.

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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.

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.

Inferno XXIII: Cloaks of Gold and Lead

Inferno XXIII: The Hypocrite Friars

Ink on paper, 2019

22 x 15”

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.

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Perhaps one of the most brilliant moments of contrapasso in L'Inferno 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 (specifically, Uberti) homes in the Gardingo neighborhood of Florence. 

Dante's genius for "just-dessertism" is in full flower in Canto XXIII, as he cloaks these unfortunate, once "jovial" friars in glimmering 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.

Inferno XIV: The Old Man of Crete

Inferno XIV: The Old Man of Crete

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

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.

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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 Book of Daniel, 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. 

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. 

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.

Inferno V: King Minos, The Adjudicator

Inferno V: King Minos, The Adjudicator

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

The dead line up to confess their sins to King Minos, who encircles himself with his serpentine tail, the number of times it girds his body corresponding directly to the circle of hell to which each soul is destined. The Prince of the Lilies, from Knossos on Crete, served as inspiration for the costuming.

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In one of the most unnerving moments of L'Inferno, Dante and Virgil observe King Minos holding court over countless souls who must report to him their transgressions before he can damn them to the appropriate circle of Hell. Dante often indulges in generous poetic license to re-imagine characters from myth and history, and his chimeric mutation of Minos from ancient Greek King to serpentine monster is one of his most colorful and sinister characterizations.

The Prince of the Lilies, a fresco unearthed at Minos' infamous Knossos palace (where beneath the floors lurked another hybrid beast, the Minotaur) gave me a great head start in imagining the adjudicator's flair for elaborate, peacock-and-lilies headdress and long, wavy locks.

Inferno I: The Three Beasts

Inferno I: The Three Beasts

Ink on paper, 2016

22 x 15”

As he begins his journey, Dante is three times turned back for fear of attack by three wild beasts: a leopard (representing lust), a lion (pride) and a she-wolf (avarice).

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What began as my favorite Inferno image in my sketchbook—indeed, the one that kicked off the project in an exciting way for me—has lately haunted me in its lack of sophistication and gravitas since I committed it to larger scale. I drew this spread no less than five times before arriving at this version and I'm intent on developing an improved iteration, once the whole series is finished and I have time to backtrack and fix things. It's driving me nuts. It's too playful and disarming.

Providing narrative context is important if one is to understand the relevance of Dante's encounter with the leopard, lion and she-wolf, set early in the poem, shortly after Dante awakens in the forest, filled with regret and fear. As he makes his way through the landscape, he encounters three savage beasts. In almost all scholars' minds, these animals represent three grave sins of man, but there's sometimes disagreement about which transgressions they are. 

I'm most familiar with the edition of La Commedia that was translated and glossed by Robert and Jean Hollander in 2000. They eloquently discuss the animal metaphors in their notes:

“The early commentators are strikingly in accord; for them the beasts signify (1) three of the seven mortal sins: lust, pride, and avarice. Modern interpreters mainly—but not entirely, as we shall see—reject this formulation. One of these interpretations is based on Inferno VI. 75, the three “sparks” that have lit evil fires in the hearts of contemporary Florentines, according to Ciacco, who is seconded by Brunetto Latini [Inf. XV. 68]): (2) envy, pride, and avarice. Others suggest that the key is found at Inferno XI. 81–82, where, describing the organization of the punishment of sin, Virgil speaks of (3) “the three dispositions Heaven opposes, incontinence, malice, and mad brutishness.” Even within this approach there are strong disagreements as to which beast represents which Aristote-lian/Ciceronian category of sin: is the leopard fraud or incontinence? is the she-wolf incontinence or fraud? (the lion is seen by all those of this “school” as violence). For instance, some have asked, if the leopard is fraud, the worst of the three dispositions to sin, why is it the beast that troubles Dante the least? A possible answer is that fraud is the disposition least present in Dante.”

Excerpt From: Dante, Robert Hollander & Jean Hollander. “The Inferno.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/sBENE.l

I would be perfectly content if scholars could reach some consensus on these interpretations, if only for my stumbling on the convenient formal metaphor that associates the leopard's camouflage with the concept of "fraud." Nothing's easy in hell.

Sketches for the cover of a book of poems.

The Colossus of Rhodes

Not sure why, but I have been thinking about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World a lot lately. 

I decided to make this little picture and poem as an ode to the Colossus of Rhodes.

Sketchbook: One Day University.

We spent the day listening to some really stimulating lectures by Professors from Columbia, Yale, Brown and Rutgers University. I'm so glad I went. 

I've said before that sketching while listening to discussion intensifies my focus on what's being said, and helps me make sense of information. Below are spreads from each of the talks.

Louis Masur from Rutgers talked about Lincoln as "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary," and chronicled the transformation of his thinking about slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment.

My favorite talk of the day was delivered by the brilliant Tamar Szabó Gendler from Yale. She offered a cogent yet brief discussion entitled "How to Think Like a Philosopher." Excellent and very helpful to me as I continue to frame my thinking on Truth Beauty and Goodness in studio discourse.

In the middle of all of it, I took a break to reflect on some thoughts about the role of philosophy in critical discourse, the subject of my talk at the ATINER conference in Greece the first week of June.

Tina Rivers from Columbia discussed four paintings which exemplify particular roles of the art. Good talk about some great contributions to painting.

Finally, John Stein from Brown discussed learning, memory and the brain—a fascinating explanation of various times of memory, the physiological processes which trigger them and ways to keep neurogenesis active.

The Architecture of Pictorial Narrative

Diptych With Scenes of the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and the Last Judgment: 1275-1325.

Many months ago I was introduced to a sensitively wrought object from the RISD Museum’s collection, a carved, ivory dyptich which seamlessly intertwines the lives of Christ and the Blessed Mother from the Annunciation to the Last Judgment, calling out key phases in the history of their sacred relationship. The dyptich is small, only about 10 x 9 inches when open, and yet some potent storytelling unfolds within the close quarters of the carving, and every inch of space is put to elegant use. The flow of pictorial narrative is fluid but unusual to our 21^st century sensibilities, beginning in the lower left with the Annunciation and the birth of Christ, followed by the heraldic arrival of the three kings in the lower right. The top two registers are dedicated to Christ’s Crucifixion and the Blessed Mother’s celestial coronation, paired with the Last Judgment of Christ, who reigns omnipotent as the wee spirits of earth climb from sarcophagi beneath his feet. What a story, and it’s told with exquisite eloquence and economy in the space of 90 square inches.

This was an object of prayerful reflection for the person who owned it. The panels were carved sometime around 1300 and its craftsmanship signifies the importance of object to both maker and owner. But such impressive technical mastery underscores something even more culturally fascinating—the indispensible role of visual narrative as a vehicle for the stories that matter to us. I bring to this encounter the perspective of an illustrator, dedicated to the distillation of message and meaning in elaborately encoded constellations of visual signs. It’s no surprise, then, that I would be particularly struck by its maker’s mastery of narrative form.

There are striking structural likenesses between medieval art and things like contemporary comics, which continue to evolve in sophisticated ways. Check out Chris Ware’s most recent accomplishment, Building Stories, in which the architecture of page and picture become one, and the reading experience is as immersive as a 300-page novel. While the subject matter differs significantly in this comparison, the formal and temporal aspects of the reading experiences are equally sensitive to the architecture of pictorial narrative, transcending boundaries of space and time. In the dyptich’s lower left panel, for example, we actively decipher the story of the Annunciation and the birth of Christ almost simultaneously, accompanied by shepherds and their flocks embedded in the hills beyond.

Consider for a moment the enormous creative challenge faced by the maker of this object: wordlessly tell the life story of Jesus Christ and his Mother—from Madonna and Child to grieving mother and martyred son to King and Queen of Heaven—and make sure the person reading this story can carry it in his satchel on travels to strange lands. Make sure he can study it while resting beneath a tree, hold it reflectively in his hands as he dims the candle at night, carry its significance in his heart and dreams. A lifetime unfolds in this diminutive, sacred object, and we continue to learn from its eloquence.

The Journey Begins.

Despite my reticence in recent months, I have been working on things—dividing my time between illustration work with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, Department Head duties at RISD and preparing for teaching this Spring. Shamefully, I've allowed things to lapse here and I need to get on the stick.

It takes, sometimes, one potent coincidence to make me want to talk. It happened this morning. 

Next week I am beginning a new class,  Illustrating Dante's Comedy, with the brilliant Mark Sherman from RISD's English Department. It's a stab at interdisciplinary teaching and learning and while our shared goal is as partners in the pursuit of deeper understanding of a great poem I suspect I have much more to gain from Mark than he does from me, given his prolonged and dutiful study of Dante and the Comedy. It's all very exciting and I'm eager to learn and teach in tandem. I've been studying the Hollander edition of the poem and have been poring over visual materials dating as far back as 1481 in Brown's Hay Library. What a privilege.

In an earnest effort to school myself on such a daunting literary masterpiece, I pulled up my chair in front of the fire this morning to finish up some introductory reading of Boccaccio's Life of Dante. I had a headache. The dogs snored at my feet, a bunch of brown in the glow of flames (shades of l'inferno?). It was getting good, every bit of it. As I read about Dante's exile from Florence and his restless wandering through Italy, I came upon a passage about the time he spent in Ravenna, and was reminded of my own experience there. 

Back in fall 2007 I was beginning a gig as Chief Critic for RISD's European Honors Program in Rome. I had the great fortune of taking in much of Italy, benefitting from collaboration with a wonderful Italian named Ezio Genovesi, whose authority on things Italian blessed my every experience there. Our first tour with students began in Ravenna, at St. Apollinaire in Classe, and its magnificent mosaic altar affected me deeply. My thoughts wandered from Boccaccio's narrative as I replayed a conversation with Ezio about the illusion of an enormous, omnipotent eye, which (when viewed from a particular angle) seemed to stare me down from the transfiguration mosaic over the altar. The effect was very powerful and I was moved by it. 

More reading about Dante's exile and the thoughts about Ravenna faded. Coffee called. I left my chair for the kitchen, where I poured a cup, book in hand, headache rapping behind my right eye. When I returned to the fire, I was awed to notice a pattern of wrinkles in the back of the chair where I'd been sitting. Something about the weight and curve of my spine—about the way the white velvet buckled under the wool of my sweater, about the way the newly installed ceiling spot cast shadows of the hillocks—had formed the same eye-shaped motif from the church in Ravenna. 

Why do we experience these things? I'm not such a great believer in signs, but I do think recognition of coincidence and perceptual patterns is a gift some of us cultivate in the name of art. As I begin the spring semester, studying an ancient poem whose perfection is found in its rich metaphorical imagery, its nimble terza rima structure, and its profound narrative of personal transformation, I'm content to say that I'm accompanied by the eye of Dante, as both master and advocate. The journey begins.

Ecstasy

"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying."

Assisi.

Running

10.2 miles in 1:17:43 (7:39 per mile)

I've lived in Rome a little more than a year yet I had not yet seen Villa Ada, on the northern end of the city. I set out along the river to Piazza del Popolo, then to Villa Borghese and north into illa Ada. So this is where are the runners are! Nice park with lots of people. Took a short cut down Via Veneto on the way back.

I spent the day in Assisi yesterday. It's not too far, just about 2.5 hours by train, so I repeatedly put off the journey. After all, I could easily get there any time. But the ghosts of San Francesco and Giotto summoned me to the Basilica and the surrounding hills.

The weather is pretty hot again, which is a bit of a disappointment, but there was a nice breeze from the mountains, so there was some respite from the sun. I lost my cell phone on the train, and this signaled an opportunity to once again leave aside the complicating forces of daily life. I wonder if San Francesco had something to do with it.

The enormity of the Basilica, and more specifically Giotto's frescoes of the life of St. Francesco, overwhelmed me. His sense of design, the cognition in his decisions and his cleverness in establishing relationships among parts of an image are revealed in details. In The Renunciation of Worldly Goods, Giotto establishes a dynamic constellation of hands to call out the narrative essence of conflict in the story: St. Francesco, having shed his clothes in a vow of poverty, gestures to the heavens in explanation; a bishop holds secure what remains of Francesco's clothing; the hand of God mystically beckons Francesco from within a cloud; his father's angry hand is restrained by another; and a witness on the left directs us toward the central action once again. What a master of narrative he was.

I visited the Basilica twice yesterday and spent a couple of hours in between walking the trails toward the Carceri, which I never reached. The climb was quite challenging, as I scrambled over the pink and gray stones on a very steep mountain trail. I got a late start and the temperature was probably close to 90º so after an hour I stopped to rest, dedicated some thoughts to my mother, and tried to conjure up an image of St. Francesco, emerging from the cool shade of the woods and offering me a drink of water.