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    Sandow Birk

    Dante's Divine Comedy, 2002/2003

    Illustrated book by Sandow Birk, depicting Dante's "Divine Comedy"
     

    Statement

    Bound book with lithographs

    Edition of 100

    14 ½ x 11 x 3 inches

    MORE about this artwork

    Dante's Divine Comedy

    In this five-year project, Birk adapted the entire text of Dante's Divine Comedy into contemporary slang and set the action in contemporary urban America. The project resulted in three, limited edition books, Dante's Inferno, Dante's Purgatorio, and Dante's Paradiso, each containing more than 60 original lithographs and published by Trillium Press in San Francisco.

    image description
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    Sandow Birk

    Purgatorio, Canto XXV (vignette), 2003

    Ink on mylar

    14 x 13 inches unframed with matte

    image description
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    Sandow Birk

    Purgatorio, Canto IX: The Gates of Purgatory, 2003

    Ink on mylar

    8 x 10 inches

    MORE about this artwork

    This work is part of Sandow Birk's epic series "Dante's Divine Comedy," a five-year project, which involved adapting the text of Dante's entire "Divine Comedy" into contemporary slang and setting the action in urban America. The third book in the series, "Dante's Purgatorio," is set in San Francisco and contains multilingual icons and signs in Spanish, English, Chinese and Japanese, evoking San Francisco's multiculturalism. In "Purgatorio: Canto IX," Birk's gates of Pergatory resemble the facade of of a Hindu temple, commenting on the multiethnic and multiple faiths of our modern-day society.

    image description
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    Sandow Birk

    Purgatorio, Canto IX (vignette), 2003

    Ink on mylar

    14 x 13 inches unframed with matte

    image description
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    Sandow Birk

    Clip from Dante's Inferno: The Movie, 2007

    Video

    MORE about this artwork

    From the outset of Birk's Dante's Divine Comedy project, there was the intention to make a contemporary film without the aid of any computer effects whatsoever – to make a film that was true to a toy theatre production of the Victorian era. As with the book projects, the inspiration for the look of the film were the engravings of Gustave Doré, but now developed in the contemporary works of Birk’s illustrations – setting the action in urban America. The filmmakers wanted to retain the look of engravings in both the puppets and the world they inhabit. As the script was developed, each scene of the film was storyboarded and the action was broken down to specific movements and facial expressions. For each new feeling or action, a new puppet had to be made - more than 100 for protagonist Dante alone - resulting in more than 500 puppets in the production.

    birk-divine-comedy-video-clip
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Sandow Birk

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