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 Subject
Subject Source: Sackner Database

Found in 2661 Collections and/or Records:

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XX/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-54968-990381
Scope and Contents

XX/2 Tiresias is here depicted at the point of flux between male and female, as his staff touches the intertwining snakes that effect his transformation. The sky is full of portents, the earth alive with catastrophe (for the foretelling of fun to come is hardly the stock-in-trade of Classical seers). The presence of astronomical paraphernalia hints at the growth of scientific endeavour that will develop from those very sources of Astrology and Alchemy. The original collage that formed the black and white basis of this image was made from the usual source materials and the sky contains the complete quota of celestial bodies from an annual volume of the Boy's Own Paper. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XX/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-54986-990393
Scope and Contents

XX/3 Virgil remembers the Mantuan landscape of his early years and this provides a pastoral interlude, albeit darkened by the story of the daughter of Tiresias, Manto, the sorceress and founder of Mantua. The landscape is a fragment of a painting by that city's other great son, Andrea Mantegna. It is framed by quasi-alchemical and Cabbalistic signs. The text and central image also appear as page 151 of the revised edition of A Humument. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XX/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-54987-990394
Scope and Contents

XX/4 The study motif makes its third appearance and here serves via the absence of Virgil to underline Dante's resolute denial of Virgil's association with the dark arts, an important part of his characterisation in the Middle Ages. The ease with which that poet passes through this particular Bolgia is another clue to Dante's message (cf. Canto II/1). Only a book remains, now rendered innocent and rural in character. As Dante uses Virgil so I have used W. H. Mallock (we each get the master we deserve), and this debt is suggested by the decoration of the pages shown with a version of the endpapers of Mallock's now much mined and travestied novel. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXI/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-54988-990395
Scope and Contents

Canto XXI/1 This selection of Devils, each freely improvised, stands (in the same way as do the masks in III/1 for the whole work) as a dramatis personae for this section (Cantos XXI"”XXIII) of the Inferno. They range from the sinister to the humorously grotesque, thus reflecting the variety of reactions that these episodes and characters have evinced from readers through the ages: some (like myself) have seen the activities of the Devils as a buffo episode, a little tongue-in-cheek like the modern Gothic horror film; others (like Ruskin) have seen in them an unambiguous representation of evil. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXI/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55027-998882
Scope and Contents

XXI/2 Once again Dante's attitude is equivocal. He is portrayed here by a rubber stamp (a surprise gift from a French artist Philippe Lagautriere, who hand-cut it after a reproduction of the original frontispiece to this book). The pilgrim seems both frightened and amused as he watches the devils and learns (or, as the poet, invents) their names. Some English translators have attempted to find equivalents for Malacoda, Graffiacane etc. (Evil-tail, Scratch-dog. . .) though the results have been generally quite feeble. Except for the appearance in this image of several variants I have stuck to the Italian, especially since it is probable that Dante is using distortions of the names of well-known Florentines (e. g. two of the twelve Priors in 1300 who were called Menno Branca and Raffacani). -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXI/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55028-998883
Scope and Contents

XXI/3 Cinematic as ever in his direction of the action Dante's presentation here of diabolical buffoonery reminded me of broad-bottomed two-reeler farce. At the top of the (singed) film strip Dante and Virgil occupy the first frame in a debased guise; Dante as he appears on the current label of a bottle of olive-oil (Olio Dante, supplied by Alison Meryick-Hughes) and Virgil as he appears on the wrapper of the excellent Virgilio butter (purchased by me in Milan, though made of course in Mantua). The lower two frames show Laurel and Hardy in the same relationship as the poets, making a Stan of Dante and an 011y of Virgil. Teased with great difficulty from the inexhaustible Mallock is a version of Dante's original greeting to Virgil (Or se to quel Virgilio) and the Italian for 'I am Stan'. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXI/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55029-998884
Scope and Contents

XXI/4 This self-explanatory confection of collaged fragments of Dore's illustrations (with the addition of a gramophone horn taken from an American anthology called 'Have Fun with Collage) is one of the few pictures in the book that is an illustration in the standard sense. The goose-stepping is an obvious allusion to the military character of Dante's Devils. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXII/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55030-998885
Scope and Contents

Canto XXII/1 The bathers of Canto XII/ I here appear reversed with only their many silhouettes now visible, for the immersion here is an even darker mockery of Baptism, which now takes place in sticky pitch. These are the shady racketeers (or barrators) even less distinguishable than those whose violence was of a more open kind -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXII/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55033-998886
Scope and Contents XXII/2 Dante and Virgil are distinctly 'Behind Enemy Lines' as the title graphic of this image states, and the poet in this canto has in fact become a kind of war-reporter. The various elements of this picture were culled from a single issue of 'Combat' magazine. All the excerpts are reprinted undoctored on a background colour that recalls that of pulp magazines and wartime printing. The only slight adaptation is in the character addressed as 'D. . .' in the bottom right hand frame where I have reinforced the slight resemblance to Dante originally possessed by the drawing. The central panel is one of the Devil drawings destined for the first image of Canto XXI (magnified X6). The individual excerpts were selected to reflect the eternal factionalism and race-hatred of war: Germans, English, Japanese all fare badly in these crude unequivocal commercial drawings and even Dante's own `Eyeties' look to be in trouble despite their having that national unity that was one of the Poet's...
Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXII/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55034-998887
Scope and Contents

XXII/3 Barratry, the civil version of Simony (cf. Canto XIX), was the crime for which Dante himself was condemned by his native city (he was to have been decapitated if ever he returned to Florence). No biographer has suggested that this was anything but a trumped-up charge to precipitate his exile. Thus crime, charge, verdict and punishment were all themselves acts of political racketeering. Dante is significantly silent throughout this Canto, for the only time in the journey. Here protected by the light of his innocence he is shown surrounded by the Devils who repeat the accusation made by their Florentine counterparts; he meets it whichever way he turns. Here and there we see traces of a rubber-stamp lily (the rubber-stamp being what Reich would have called the character armour of corrupt political officials). -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXII/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55035-998888
Scope and Contents XXII/4 Though much plundering has been done from Dore's illustrations to the Comedy this is the only use made of Blake's fine and eccentric visions (Dore, since he never transcends the literal descriptions of the text and is always innocent of allegorical implications seemed fairer game). Alone of Blake's pictures after Dante this, with its energetic but rather clumsily realised figures, seemed to have a naive, comic-book aspect. The specialised type of drawing that characterises the American comic (Superman, Batman etc. all of which I devoured eagerly when they arrived in parcels from American aunts towards the end of the war) lies outside my range and it seemed appropriate to pass on the initial work of transcription to a professional illustrator (Paul Tupling) who presented me with a very well realised basis for this version. In the upper half of this picture the same figures are merely differently oriented to indicate their swooping towards a collision, using the typical inset...
Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIII/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55036-998889
Scope and Contents

Canto XXIII/1 The curtain finally falls on Dante's episodes of Grand Guignol. The last glimpse we have, appropriate enough to the ethos of Laurel and Hardy and the Keystone Cops, is of a classic chase sequence. The presence of a curtain also recalls the existence of a barrier beyond which the Devils cannot go (as each sinner is in life locked in his sin, so is he locked in the confined area of his punishment in Hell; unlike Purgatory there is no promotion in Hell). The visual reference here is the kind of stage featured in Pollock's Toy Theatres and the colours are those I associate with the early chromo-lithographic theatre cut-outs. The curtain in fact comes from a pelmet-design in La Mode Illustree and the rest of the collage from fragments of the Boy's Own Paper. The stones move at Dante's fleeing feet to show that he is a corporeal presence in a world of shades. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIII/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55045-998896
Scope and Contents XXIII/2 A cluster of parental images in the text is here echoed by an image-cluster of my own. Virgil, Dante's acknowledged father-figure, snatches him up to save him from the pursuing devils; the poet compares this action to a mother rescuing a child from a burning house. The two poets have here their moment of greatest mental and physical intimacy; Virgil has become both father and mother. I here quote, via a watercolour copy after a reproduction, the mother and child from Guernica which Picasso was working on the day I was born (one of the drawings for this figure is dated 25. 5. 37). The relevance is also underlined by the fact that Guernica is the work of an artist in political exile commenting on the fate of his divided homeland. The other quotation that completes the ensemble is from my own work Ein Deutsches Requiem (after Brahms) and is from the part of the work that illustrates the text (a section of the composition which Brahms dedicated to the memory of his mother) 'Ich...
Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIII/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55046-998897
Scope and Contents

XXIII/3 In this circle the hypocrites are found wearing leaden cloaks gilded over. This seemed particularly pertinent to Dante by virtue of the etymology of the word that appears in the 12th Century dictionary of Uguccione de Bagni: i. e. YPER meaning 'above' and CRISIS meaning 'gold'. It is a good example of bad information making good art since the etymology is quite erroneous. In the original printing gold screen-ink covered a base of lead-black (graphite) to echo the metaphor in physical terms. The false etymology is featured in a design made from the same piece of coarse monkish hessian quoted for the Franciscan imagery of Canto XVI/3. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIII/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55047-998898
Scope and Contents

XXIII/4 This image ends the second volume of the original edition. The Crucifixion is parodied in the pinning of Caiaphas to the floor of the circle of hypocrites: i. e. he is so low in the scale of that sin that he is only fit to be walked over by the others. To increase the irony the figure is made of collage fragments of natural elements (rock etc.) to indicate that he has become part of the very structure of Hell. The floor is made of the same pleats as form the rivers of tears in Canto XIV/4. The rest, including the hints of cowled figures in the background, comes from fragments of Dore's illustrations -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIV/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55048-998899
Scope and Contents Canto XXIV/1 The mention of both snakes and ladders in this Canto and the discussion of transitory things at the mercy of chance and change which opens it, suggested, as life and man's haphazard progress must have suggested to the anonymous deviser of the game, Snakes and Ladders (with which I was so familiar as a child). When I looked in toyshops to find such a board they seemed to have so declined in quality of drawing that I started to look instead in junk shops for a model, eventually finding one in a London hotel on a Sunday at the 'Postcards and Ephemera Fair 1982.' It still seems to be a potent and edifying metaphor, more jumpy, episodic, and therefore more lifelike than the Wheel of Fortune. I adapted this version from the colour scheme of the above-mentioned board and increased the number of snakes, making some of them remove the 'player' from the board altogether. I also changed the proportions to fit my modular format and recast the numbers to make a magic rectangle more...
Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIV/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55085-9998913
Scope and Contents

XXIV/2 These four images of transience as exemplified by the elements reflect Dante's opening pastoral simile and Virgil's recapitulations of its meaning in both his change of mood and his exhortation to Dante to beware of slothfulness which produces the ephemeral life. Air, Fire, Snow and Water are illustrated from Boy's Own Paper fragments (Virgil's is a very BOP message here). Earth is only hinted at in the gritty mezzotint border. At the centre (from La Mode Illustree) are reminiscences of 'blankets and soft dawn'. In Dante's day (as throughout Europe until as late as the nineteenth century) Fame was an honourable goal that could be acknowledged without equivocation. The shapes of the compartments of the picture resemble those of playing cards as if to continue the imagery of chance. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIV/3 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55086-9998914
Scope and Contents

XXIV/3 Dante alludes to the Phoenix in the mood of ancient knowledge and I have thus tried to make a page of some imagined manuscript in which such arcana might have been found. The phoenix has a special relevance to pages of this book in particular since the whole production was revived from its own ashes after the first year's work on the original had been destroyed in a fire at Editions Alecto in 1979. The range of Dante's sources, ancient and modern, oriental and occidental is present in the stylistic and calligraphic mixture of this page with its hieroglyphs, pseudo-oriental script, its Greek illuminated capital, its sequence of Phoenix pictures reminiscent of alchemical treatises, and its modern typographic fragment. The lidded box implies the union of ancient and Hermetic imagery with Christian thought, a feat of unification on Dante's part that outstrips Aquinas. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIV/4 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55087-9998915
Scope and Contents

XXIV/4 As in Canto XVI/1 the original Golden Section Lily has been subject to computerised distortion. These are more extreme variants from the graphics computer at Leicester Polytechnic. They serve to represent, according to the misty prophecies of Vanni Fucci (nicknamed 'the Beast' and himself an extremist of the Black Guelph faction) the fates of the Black and White Guelph parties. The Whites suffer the greater distortion in the fall of their fortunes while the more recognisable Black lily seems to float higher. The original drawing was, so to speak, wrapped around itself in an imaginary space by the computer which made more possible the airborne aspect of the emblems as they participate in Vanni Fucci's strange shrouded meteorological predictions, so darkly turbulent. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1983

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXIX/1 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

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Identifier: CC-55210-9998974
Scope and Contents Canto XXIX/1 Over a brooding landscape flies a figure representing the folly of false magic and all its claims. Some hint of the French myth of Leonardo da Vinci's flight links the theme to Dante's 'Apes of Nature' in the last line of this Canto where the poet seems to refer to certain kinds of artists who make outlandish claims or whose pretensions in their art are the equivalent of folly. The artist here seems to be disregarding both the technological marvel of the man in flight and, to judge by the work on his easel (a quotation from one of my own flag paintings of c. 1974), the splendour of the landscape around him. The figure which combines the Leonardesque intimations of mechanical flight with the false wings of Icarus seems to surge towards an unknown future in the necessary folly of risk without which art or science cannot advance. Perhaps though it is the mere fantasy of the artist as he works. The landscape, however, is solid enough and recalls the structure of the Bolgia...
Dates: 1983