From 2001 to 2005, the well-known Los Angeles artist Sandow Birk
created 100 full-page and 100 vignette engravings for his and Marcus Sanders’
three-volume translation of Dante’s Divine
Comedy. The engravings were
originally published by Trillium Press as a three-volume limited-edition livres d’artiste. In 2005 they were republished by Chronicle
Books in a softbound commercial format.
While working on the engravings Birk also completed three paintings
related to the prints, and in 2007 he constructed a feature film of the Inferno voiced by such celebrities as
Dermot Mulroney and featuring hand-drawn paper puppets on a toy theater stage. The interview below was conducted by e-mail
in mid-May of this year.
KF: In earlier interviews
and acknowledgments, you’ve described your Commedia knowledge
as coming mainly from your own reading of it, conversations with Dante
specialists, especially Michael Meister, and Gustave Doré’s engravings. Were
there any other, perhaps less influential sources you can recall, such as other
illustration cycles?
SB: Yes, I came to the Commedia
by accident, actually. Trained as a painter and an artist, I stumbled on an old
copy of the Divine Comedy with the
Gustave Doré illustrations in a used bookstore in Los Angeles and I was really
drawn in and attracted to the illustrations. I bought the book and had it
laying around my studio for a year or so, casually glancing through it and then
eventually reading the text. My initial idea was to do a series of paintings
based on the Inferno, but over
several years the project grew into a series of some 200 prints, drawings,
paintings, books, and eventually a feature film.
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| "Inferno." Image used with permission from Sandow Birk. |
Yes, Michael Meister was influential and a great help, but
perhaps even more so was Peter Hawkins, who helped mentor the projects along
and became a friend over the years.
As for other influences, I think I looked at all of them
that I could find over the years I spent involved in the projects, from
Rauschenberg’s series to Italian Disney comic books, to all the great painters
who painted scenes from the Commedia
over the centuries. So, yes, I looked at everything I could find and some of it
was influential and some of it was less so, but it all was sort of sucked into
my own thinking and my own work.
KF: Do you think of
the Commedia as a “medieval” text? Why or why not?
SB: I’m not a medieval scholar, so
I’ll answer as best I can. I’m aware that the Commedia came out of the medieval era, but I think you’re asking a
different question. I’m guessing you’re implying that the Commedia might be outside the standard definition of “medieval” in
a time sense, since it is so complex and multilayered and expansive, that it
might be the result of more Renaissance thinking? I guess it depends on how you
label things, and I think that the Commedia
has always been outside of the boxes of labels and beyond the limits of
standard definitions. Is it a poem? It’s a poem, but it’s an amazing one and
it’s much more than a poem. It’s not really a religious text and it is at the
same time. It’s not a scientific treatise but it sort of is that too. It’s not
a history, but it has elements of that throughout it. It’s also philosophical
and entertaining and beautiful. So I would say the Commedia is more than what we might generally think of about things
from the medieval period, but it’s also so remarkable a work in so many ways,
it’s also beyond what we think of using terms from any way you look at it.
KF: What (else) do you
associate with the terms “medieval” and “Middle Ages”?
SB: Like I’ve said, I never
studied medieval history beyond what I got through art history classes, but I
guess from my mainstream knowledge I would think of the medieval period as being
a time when science and intellectual thinking sort of took a step back from
previous progress and religion became more predominant in Europe. A time when
myths and superstitions and religion put technological advancements on the back
burner.
KF: Do you perceive
your Commedia illustrations as medievalism, which is often
defined as post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages? If so, in what
ways, and if not, why?
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| "Canto XVI" Image used with permission form Sandow Birk. |
SB: I actually don’t think of my
images as illustrations of the text, but rather as contemporary works of art
based on the Commedia and about life
in contemporary urban America. They were inspired by Doré’s illustrations, but
I’m more interested in thinking about how the Commedia might be relevant and remain interesting in our everyday
lives, and I see my images as both critiquing Dante’s poem and its moral and
religious points of view and of putting them into perspective, not just
illustrating the text. So I guess the simple answer is “no,” I have never
thought of my works as “medievalism” because I actually didn’t know that term
existed until this interview.
KF: If you do see
your Commedia illustrations as medievalist, how do you
perceive your medievalism relating, if at all, to your interaction with earlier
intermediaries, especially Doré? If their responses to the Commedia could
be considered medievalism, how does their influence on you compare to your
direct responses to the Commedia?
SB: Again, since I don’t really know
the term “medievalism,” I'm going to guess that it’s similar to “orientalism”--the
romantic nostalgia and over-simplification and kitschy longing for an era that
might not have ever existed as it was imagined. Is this correct? I guess it
never really occurred to me that the ongoing, centuries-long engagement with
the Commedia might be romantic and
nostalgic in that way. I don’t think it is. I believe that the Commedia is one of the greatest works of
art of the Western world, not just pieces of literature, but art in a bigger
sense, and so I think it continues to be interesting and fascinating today and
ever since it was written. It seems like it’s more a living part of Western
culture, so I wouldn’t think of those involved in it as being romantic about,
in much the same way that studying and being involved in the Torah or the Bible
isn’t seen as being romantic for biblical times.
KF: What, if anything, do
you think your illustrations tell us about the world you inhabited when you
were making them?
SB: Well, there are a lot of them,
and, so, I hope they talk about many different things, but in general I wanted
my works to put the philosophical and theological ideas of Dante’s poem, and of
Catholicism and Christianity, in relation to our lives in American today. I
wanted to ponder those ideas and consider their relevance in the world, and I
hoped to make works that are interesting and thought-provoking and that might
make one reconsider both the Commedia
and our daily existence. And on a more simple level, I hope that in some way my
works might bring more people to be interested in Dante and to read the Commedia.
KF: What part, if any, do
you think that world played in what the Commedia revealed to
you?
SB: Everything. I’m obviously a
product of my times and of the world I live in, and it’s only through that lens
that I can read the Commedia. And as
an artist, I’m most interested in my times and my city and my life in the world
today. So it was from that angle that I sought to use the Commedia as a starting point to make my works.
KF: Beyond the published
reviews and circulation numbers for your trilogy, what sort of response have
you received to your illustrations, particularly their relationship to Dante’s
text and Doré’s engravings?
SB: Well, anyone that knows the
Doré images certainly sees the connections right off, and that’s intentional. I
was drawn to Dante because of Doré’s fantastic works, and I appreciate them and
find them fascinating and amazing. So I wanted to create my own works because of
Doré and what he had done with Dante. I wanted to start with Doré and Dante and
go from there, so I hope that people see the connection--it’s intentional. As
far as response, I guess it’s been positive. I can’t think of anything negative
off-hand. When I speak to people in person about it, it often leads to
discussions about the role of illustration and what illustration is and what it
can be, and those are discussions I always hoped would happen. My works are
meant to question the relationship between text and image, in the sense that I
don’t see my works as “illustrative” of the text, but rather more than that.
KF: With the benefit of
hindsight, is there anything you would do differently in your approach to
the Commedia?
SB: No, I don’t think so. It was
very much a long, long project of learning for me. I came on Dante sort of by
accident, and I got very interested in the poem and everything about it for
years and years and years, and I spent a lot of my time involved in Dante’s
view of life and the afterlife and Dante’s world. My work throughout evolved
and grew and changed and culminated with the film project, I think, and I’m very
proud of it all as a body of work. It was a new direction for me, and it’s led
to other projects after that, so I think it was a great period for me. I’ve
moved on from it, but I'm very pleased with it.
Karl Fugelso
Towson University
Editor's note: More of Sandow Birk's Dante-inspired work can be seen at his webpage here
Editor's note: More of Sandow Birk's Dante-inspired work can be seen at his webpage here
