The Library: A World History Presents a Stunning Visual Survey of The World’s Great Libraries

in Architecture, Art, Books, History | December 3rd, 2013

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Volu­mi­nous­ly well-read author and ama­teur librar­i­an Alber­to Manguel opens The Library at Night, a com­pen­dious trea­tise on the role of the library in human cul­ture, with a star­tling­ly bleak ques­tion. “Why then do we do it?” He asks, why do we “con­tin­ue to assem­ble what­ev­er scraps of infor­ma­tion we can gath­er in scrolls and books and com­put­er chips, on shelf after library shelf” when “out­side the­ol­o­gy and fan­tas­tic lit­er­a­ture, few can doubt that the main fea­tures of our uni­verse are its dearth of mean­ing and lack of dis­cernible pur­pose.” Manguel goes on—in beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed chap­ter after themed chapter—to list in fine detail the host of virtues each of his favorite libraries pos­sess­es, answer­ing his own ques­tion by ref­er­ence to the beau­ti­ful micro­cos­mic orders great libraries man­i­fest.

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A new book, The Library: A World His­to­ry by author James Camp­bell and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Will Pryce, takes a more work­man­like approach to the sub­ject, steer­ing clear of Manguel’s meta­physics. Even so, the book will deeply move lovers of libraries and his­to­ri­ans alike, per­haps even to ecsta­sy. One Ama­zon review­er put it sim­ply: “Book Porn at its best.”

Boing Boing calls Pryce’s pho­tographs “the cen­ter­piece of the book,” and you can see why in a cou­ple of selec­tions here. Even with­out his eye­sight, this is a project that would have delight­ed that rhap­sodist of the library, Jorge Luis Borges. At the top, see the Stra­hov Abbey library in Prague. Halfway across the world, we have the Trip­i­ta­ka Kore­ana library in South Korea (above). CNN has a gallery of Pryce’s pho­to­graph­ic trib­utes to the world’s great­est libraries, and find here a crit­i­cal review of the book by The Guardian’s Tom Lam­ont, who laments that the book sole­ly “focus­es on insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed for the priv­i­leged.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Look Inside Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al Library

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Learn to Draw Butts with Just Five Simple Lines

in Art, Comedy, K-12 | December 3rd, 2013

You know what I say when some­one tells me they “can’t” draw?

Pshaw.

Even those who’ve yet to dis­cov­er the trans­for­ma­tive effects of Lyn­da Bar­ry’s won­der­ful­ly cor­rec­tive Pic­ture This know how to draw some­thing. Very few chil­dren make it to adult­hood with­out pick­ing up some sim­ple geo­met­ric for­mu­la by which a series of ovals, rec­tan­gles and lines can be con­fig­ured to resem­ble a dog­gie head or a brave astride his can­ter­ing pony.

A cou­ple thou­sand ren­der­ings lat­er, such mag­ic still sat­is­fies, but you might want to con­sid­er branch­ing out. May I rec­om­mend the teach­ings of artist and visu­al sto­ry­teller, Karl Gude? This laid-back for­mer Direc­tor of Infor­ma­tion Graph­ics at Newsweek can — and will! — teach you how to draw “great butts” with just five lines.

Gude’s com­mand of pos­te­ri­or essen­tials is down­right heady. (I say this as a for­mer artist’s mod­el whose rear end has been mis­rep­re­sent­ed on paper more times than I’d care to men­tion.) Who knew that cap­tur­ing this part of human anato­my could prove so sim­ple? Gude’s easy­go­ing online instruc­tion style may be trace­able to some sort of adult bev­er­age (I’m not cast­ing stones…), but his meth­ods are easy enough for a child to mas­ter.

Speak­ing of which, if you want to make a friend for life, share the above video with an actu­al child, prefer­ably one who claims he or she “can’t” draw. Put a Sharpie in his or her paw, and with­in five min­utes, Gude will have the lit­tle twerp crank­ing out butts of all shapes and sizes. After which, pride of accom­plish­ment may well lead to some of Gude’s more advanced tuto­ri­als, like the detailed human eye seen below.

If that proves too chal­leng­ing, there’s no shame in stick­ing with the glutes. To my way of think­ing, the mind­set that allows the artist to keep going when his pen­cil snaps mid-demon­stra­tion is les­son enough.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Learn to Draw, and Cre­ate Beau­ty Even If Nobody Else Cares

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

Clever Ani­ma­tion Brings Fig­ure Draw­ings to Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s per­son­al mot­to is Dare to Be Heinie. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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In Touching Video, Artist Marina Abramović & Former Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

in Art, Life | December 2nd, 2013

In 2010, Ser­bian artist Mari­na Abramović had the hon­or of being the sub­ject of a pop­u­lar ret­ro­spec­tive at New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Through­out the show, Abramović per­formed a gru­el­ing piece enti­tled “The Artist Is Present,” sit­ting in the museum’s atri­um and invit­ing the swelling crowds of view­ers to sit direct­ly oppo­site her, in silent dia­logue. Abramović was no stranger to chal­leng­ing per­for­mances. By the time that MoMA staged the ret­ro­spec­tive, the then 63-year-old artist had engaged in count­less tax­ing exhi­bi­tions, earn­ing her self-giv­en title, “the grand­moth­er of per­for­mance art.”

In her first per­for­mance at 27, Abramović explored the idea of rit­u­al by play­ing a knife game on cam­era, stab­bing the sur­face between her splayed fin­gers with a knife and occa­sion­al­ly hurt­ing her­self; she would then watch a video record­ing of the vio­lence, and attempt to repli­cate it. Sub­se­quent per­for­mances includ­ed her explo­rations of con­scious­ness through the inges­tion of pills for cata­to­nia and depres­sion; anoth­er com­prised a 1974 incar­na­tion of her MoMA per­for­mance, where Abramović  sat pas­sive­ly before a table lit­tered with objects for six hours, invit­ing the audi­ence to put them to use on her per­son (of this piece, Abramović says, “What I learned was that… if you leave it up to the audi­ence, they can kill you… I felt real­ly vio­lat­ed: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stom­ach…”)

In 1976, Abramović  met Ulay, a West Ger­man artist who would become her lover and col­lab­o­ra­tor for the next twelve years. The duo fell into an imper­son­al abyss, los­ing their self­hoods and attempt­ing to become a sin­gle enti­ty through arrest­ing per­for­mances such as Breath­ing In/Breathing Out, where they locked mouths and breathed each other’s exhaled breath, even­tu­al­ly fill­ing their lungs with car­bon monox­ide and falling uncon­scious. By 1988, their romance had run its course; in typ­i­cal­ly atyp­i­cal fash­ion, the pair decid­ed to part by walk­ing from oppos­ing ends of the Great Wall of Chi­na until they met in the mid­dle, and then said good­bye.

On the open­ing night of Abramović’s ret­ro­spec­tive in 2010, the erst­while lovers were reunit­ed. The video above shows Abramović, sit­ting and steel­ing her­self for her next silent inter­locu­tor. Ulay approach­es, and Abramović, a vet­er­an of such dif­fi­cult per­for­mances, looks up to what may have been the sin­gle most unex­pect­ed sight of the night, jolt­ing her dig­ni­fied com­po­sure. Their reunion is a deeply ten­der scene.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Read Rejection Letters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut & Andy Warhol

in Art, Letters, Literature | November 21st, 2013

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Every suc­cess­ful artist must mas­ter the art of accept­ing rejec­tion. “Fail bet­ter,” said Beck­ett in his grim euphemism for per­se­ver­ance. “I love my rejec­tion slips,” wrote Sylvia Plath in every hope­ful poet’s favorite quote. “They show me I try.” Plath—who also wrote “I am made, crude­ly, for success”—collected scores of rejec­tion let­ters, receiv­ing them even after the con­sid­er­able suc­cess of 1960’s The Colos­sus and Oth­er Poems. The 1962 let­ter above (click here to view in a larg­er for­mat), from The New York­er, doesn’t exact­ly reject a Plath sub­mis­sion, but it does rec­om­mend cut­ting the entire first sec­tion of “Amne­si­ac” and resub­mit­ting “the sec­ond sec­tion alone under that title.” “Per­haps we’re being dense,” demurs edi­tor Howard Moss.

The rejec­tion must have been all the more painful since Plath was under a con­tract with the mag­a­zine, which enti­tled her to “an annu­al sum for the priv­i­lege of hav­ing a ‘first read­ing’ plus sub­se­quent pub­lish­ing rights to her new poet­ry,” Plath schol­ars tell us. And yet “much to her dis­tress she main­ly received rejec­tions dur­ing Novem­ber and Decem­ber 1962.” The poem was even­tu­al­ly bro­ken in two, with the first half pub­lished as “Lyon­nesse,” but not by Plath her­self but by pub­lish­ers after her death. Hear Plath read the full poem as she intend­ed it in her edi­tion of Ariel, above.

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Kurt Von­negut received an imper­son­al, and it would seem, long-over­due rejec­tion let­ter from edi­tor of The Atlantic Edward Weeks in 1949. Weeks writes breezi­ly that he found Vonnegut’s “sam­ples” dur­ing the “usu­al sum­mer house-clean­ing,” announc­ing its slush-pile sta­tus. Weeks does at least give the impres­sion that some­one, if not him, had read Vonnegut’s sub­mis­sions. The aspir­ing writer was 27 years old, strik­ing out “just a few years after sur­viv­ing the bomb­ing of Dres­den as a POW,” Let­ters of Note informs us, and still twen­ty years away from pub­lish­ing his ground­break­ing nov­el Slaugh­ter­house Five. Let­ters of Note also pro­vides us with the tran­script below for the bad­ly fad­ed type­script.

The Atlantic Month­ly

August 29, 1949

Dear Mr. Von­negut:

We have been car­ry­ing out our usu­al sum­mer house-clean­ing of the man­u­scripts on our anx­ious bench and in the file, and among them I find the three papers which you have shown me as sam­ples of your work. I am sin­cere­ly sor­ry that no one of them seems to us well adapt­ed to for our pur­pose. Both the account of the bomb­ing of Dres­den and your arti­cle, “What’s a Fair Price for Gold­en Eggs?” have drawn com­men­da­tion although nei­ther one is quite com­pelling enough for final accep­tance.

Our staff con­tin­ues ful­ly manned so I can­not hold out the hope of an edi­to­r­i­al assign­ment, but I shall be glad to know that you have found a promis­ing open­ing else­where.

Faith­ful­ly yours,

(Signed, ‘Edward Weeks’)

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Of course visu­al artists are not immune. Andy Warhol received the above rejec­tion let­ter from New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art when he attempt­ed to donate a draw­ing in 1956. To its lat­er cha­grin, the muse­um wouldn’t let him give his work away:

Last week our Com­mit­tee on the Muse­um Col­lec­tions held its first meet­ing of the fall sea­son and had a chance to study your draw­ing enti­tled Shoe which you so gen­er­ous­ly offered as a gift to the Muse­um.

I regret that I must report to you that the Com­mit­tee decid­ed, after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, that they ought not to accept it for our Col­lec­tion.

The Warhol rejec­tion cir­cu­lat­ed a few years ago after the MoMA tweet­ed Let­ters of Note’s post on it (read the full tran­script there). Its most galling fea­ture: a post­script that reads, with dis­mis­sive cour­tesy, “The draw­ing may be picked up from the muse­um at your con­ve­nience.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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David Bowie Appears in the “Director’s Cut” of a New Louis Vuitton Ad, Nods to Labyrinth

in Art, Design, Film, Television | November 17th, 2013

Look­ing like a haute cou­ture treat­ment of “As the World Falls Down” from Labyrinth, by way of Peter Jackson’s Beau­ti­ful Crea­tures, the “Director’s Cut” of this Louis Vuit­ton ad above, titled “L’Invitation au Voy­age,” is pret­ty stun­ning. Bowie lip syncs “I’d Rather be High,” a stand out from his lat­est, The Next Day, and looks near­ly as mag­net­ic as his Gob­lin King did almost thir­ty years ago. He’s def­i­nite­ly still got it on screen, mak­ing me pine for anoth­er Bowie-led fea­ture-length fan­ta­sy (but not a Labyrinth remake).

The mak­ing-of reel above might also be of inter­est, although at under two min­utes, the tech­no mon­tage doesn’t offer much insight into the elab­o­rate design of the short. Of more inter­est for fans of fash­ion, design, and film may be this blog post (in Chi­nese), which fea­tures some gor­geous pro­duc­tion stills and sto­ry­boards, like the one below. The short’s direc­tor, Romain Gavras, pre­vi­ous­ly made the video for Kanye West and Jay Z’s “No Church in the Wild,” so he’s def­i­nite­ly got an eye for spec­ta­cle.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie’s New Video for ‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’ With Til­da Swin­ton

David Bowie’s Fash­ion­able Mug Shot From His 1976 Mar­i­jua­na Bust

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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George Saunders’ Lectures on the Russian Greats Brought to Life in Student Sketches

in Art, Literature, Writing | November 11th, 2013

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Click for larg­er image

We’ve seen plen­ty of post-mod­ern decay in writ­ers before George Saun­ders—in Don DeLil­lo, J.G. Ballard—but nev­er has it been filled with such puck­ish warmth, such whim­si­cal detail, and such empa­thy, to use a word Saun­ders prizes. As a writer, Saun­ders draws read­ers in close to a very human world, albeit a frag­ment­ed, burned out, and frayed one, and it seems that he does so as a teacher as well. Since 1997, Saun­ders has taught cre­ative writ­ing at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, where he received his M.A. in 1988, and where he remains, despite being award­ed a MacArthur “Genius” Fel­low­ship in 2006 and pub­lish­ing steadi­ly through­out the last decade and a half. To sit in a class with Saun­ders, accord­ing to his one­time stu­dent Rebec­ca Fishow, is to vis­it with a dar­ing prac­ti­tion­er of the short form, one whose “words seem a lot like the trans­fer of secrets through a chain-link of writ­ers.”

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While attend­ing one of Saun­ders’ semes­ter-length writ­ing sem­i­nars, writer and artist Fishow com­piled the notes and sketch­es you see here (and sev­er­al more at The Believ­er’s Log­ger site). In each sketch, Saun­ders teach­es from one of his favorite clas­sic Russ­ian short sto­ry writ­ers. At the top, see him expound on Turgenev’s method, prof­fer­ing epipha­nies, keen obser­va­tions on craft, and writer­ly advice in word bubbles—“You are allowed to manip­u­late,” “Tec­ni­cian vs. Artist” [sic], “Instan­ta­neous micro-re-eval­u­a­tion (@end of story)”—while sur­round­ed by a fringy aura. Above, Fishow recon­structs Saun­ders’ take on Chekhov’s “Lady with the Pet Dog” around a por­trait of a pen­sive Saun­ders (look­ing a bit like Chekhov).

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Fishow’s recon­struc­tions are obvi­ous­ly very par­tial, and it’s not clear if she took them down on the spot or scrib­bled from mem­o­ry (the mis­spellings make me think the for­mer). In the sketch above, Saun­ders’ expli­cates Gogol, with phras­es like “VERBAL JOY!” and an Ein­stein quote: “No wor­thy prob­lem is ever solved on the plane of its orig­i­nal con­cep­tion.” The lat­ter is an inter­est­ing moment of Saun­ders’ sci­en­tif­ic back­ground slip­ping into his ped­a­gogy. Before he was a MacAu­rthur win­ner and an enthu­si­as­tic teacher, Saun­ders worked as an envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer. Of his sci­ence back­ground, he has said:

…any claim I might make to orig­i­nal­i­ty in my fic­tion is real­ly just the result of this odd back­ground: basi­cal­ly, just me work­ing inef­fi­cient­ly, with flawed tools, in a mode I don’t have suf­fi­cient back­ground to real­ly under­stand. Like if you put a welder to design­ing dress­es.

As a teacher, at least in Fishow’s notes, Saun­ders cel­e­brates “work­ing inef­fi­cient­ly.” As she puts it: “His wis­dom con­firms that flaw and uncer­tain­ty and vari­ety and empa­thy (espe­cial­ly empa­thy) are pos­i­tive aspects of the writ­ing process.” Fishow’s por­traits go a long way toward con­vey­ing those qual­i­ties in Saun­ders as a pres­ence in the class­room.

Find more sketch­es at The Believ­er’s Log­ger site.

Also Read 10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Saun­ders Extols the Virtues of Kind­ness in 2013 Speech to Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Grads

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Nazi’s Philistine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degenerate Art Exhibition” of 1937

in Art, History, Museums | November 7th, 2013

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Has any polit­i­cal par­ty in West­ern his­to­ry had as vexed a rela­tion­ship with art as the Ger­man Nation­al Social­ists? We’ve long known, of course, that their uses of and opin­ions on art con­sti­tut­ed the least of the Nazi par­ty’s prob­lems. Still, the artis­tic pro­cliv­i­ties of Hitler and com­pa­ny com­pel us, per­haps because they seem to promise a win­dow into the mind­set that result­ed in such ulti­mate inhu­man­i­ty. We can learn about the Nazis from the art they liked, but we can learn just as much (or more) from the art they dis­liked — or even that which they sup­pressed out­right.

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Cur­rent events have brought these sub­jects back to mind; this week, accord­ing to The New York Times, “Ger­man author­i­ties described how they dis­cov­ered 1,400 or so works dur­ing a rou­tine tax inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing ones by Matisse, Cha­gall, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picas­so and a host of oth­er mas­ters,” most or all pre­vi­ous­ly unknown or pre­sumed lost amid all the flight from Nazi Ger­many. Hitler him­self, more a fan of racial­ly charged Utopi­an real­ism, would­n’t have approved of most of these new­ly redis­cov­ered paint­ings and draw­ings.

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In fact, he may well have thrown them into 1937’s Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion. Four years after it came to pow­er,” writes the BBC’s Lucy Burns, “the Nazi par­ty put on two art exhi­bi­tions in Munich. The Great Ger­man Art Exhi­bi­tion [the Große Deutsche Kun­stausstel­lung] was designed to show works that Hitler approved of — depict­ing stat­uesque blonde nudes along with ide­alised sol­diers and land­scapes. The sec­ond exhi­bi­tion, just down the road, showed the oth­er side of Ger­man art — mod­ern, abstract, non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al — or as the Nazis saw it, ‘degen­er­ate.’ ” This Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion (Die Ausstel­lung “Entartete Kun­st”), the much more pop­u­lar of the two, fea­tured Paul Klee, Oskar Kokosch­ka, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Max Beck­mann, Emil Nolde and George Grosz. There the Nazis quar­an­tined these con­fis­cat­ed abstract, expres­sion­is­tic, and often Jew­ish works of art, those that, accord­ing to the Führer, “insult Ger­man feel­ing, or destroy or con­fuse nat­ur­al form or sim­ply reveal an absence of ade­quate man­u­al and artis­tic skill” and “can­not be under­stood in them­selves but need some pre­ten­tious instruc­tion book to jus­ti­fy their exis­tence.” And if that sounds rigid, you should see how that Nazis dealt with jazz.

Note: For more on this sub­ject, you can watch the 1993 doc­u­men­tary Degen­er­ate Art.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Joseph Stal­in, a Life­long Edi­tor, Wield­ed a Big, Blue, Dan­ger­ous Pen­cil

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Alberto Martini’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1901–1944)

in Art, Books | November 6th, 2013

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In 1901, Vit­to­rio Ali­nari, head of Fratel­li Ali­nari, the world’s old­est pho­to­graph­ic firm, decid­ed to pub­lish a new illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy. To do so, Ali­nari announced a com­pe­ti­tion for Ital­ian artists: each com­peti­tor had to send illus­tra­tions of at least two can­tos of the epic poem, which would result in one win­ner and a pub­lic exhi­bi­tion of the draw­ings. Among the com­peti­tors were Alber­to Zar­do, Arman­do Spa­di­ni, Ernesto Bel­lan­di, and Alber­to Mar­ti­ni.

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While Mar­ti­ni did not win the com­pe­ti­tion, he, as Vit­to­rio Sgar­bi wrote in his fore­word to Martini’s La Div­ina Com­me­dia, “seemed born to illus­trate the Divine Com­e­dy.” The 1901 con­test was fol­lowed by two more sets of illus­tra­tions between 1922 and 1944, which pro­duced alto­geth­er almost 300 works in a wide range of styles, includ­ing pen­cil and ink to the water­col­or tables paint­ed between 1943 and 1944. While repeat­ed­ly reject­ed pub­li­ca­tion dur­ing his life­time, a com­pre­hen­sive edi­tion of Martini’s La Divinia Com­me­dia is avail­able today.

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With his feel­ing for the grotesque and the macabre, Martini’s work was much more influ­enced by the North­ern Man­ner­ism move­ment than Ital­ian art and is often seen as a pre­cur­sor to Sur­re­al­ism, as Mar­ti­ni was a favorite of André Bre­ton. How­ev­er, while steeped in the sur­re­al­ism of Odilon Redon and Aubrey Beard­s­ley black and white coun­ter­points, Martini’s Divine Com­e­dy is filled with an orig­i­nal sense of fan­ta­sy and beau­ti­ful­ly con­veys Dante’s more abstract imagery. Need­less to say, Martini’s inter­pre­ta­tion was very much in a world apart from the Ital­ian Futur­ist and Meta­phys­i­cal move­ments of the day.

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Ignored by Ital­ian crit­ics most his life, Mar­ti­ni con­tin­ued to pro­duce a large num­ber of illus­tra­tions and paint­ing until his death in 1954. As he wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “Only the true great artists do not age, because they are able to inno­vate and invent new forms, new col­ors, gen­uine inven­tions.” Martini’s Divine Com­e­dy is as shock­ing and beau­ti­ful today as it was in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and is the best exam­ple of Martini’s pro­gres­sion as an artist through­out his career.

For a very dif­fer­ent artis­tic inter­pre­ta­tion of the Divine Com­e­dy, see our posts on edi­tions by Sal­vador Dalí and Gus­tave Doré.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

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