The Ultimate Dinner Party [and history lesson] – “Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante”

21Mar09

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. But for this painting, I feel compelled to give an intro(:

As dailymail.co.uk put it, “They are perhaps the ultimate dinner party guests. Stalin engages Leonardo da Vinci in conversation, Beethoven serenades Audrey Hepburn on the piano and Shakespeare is sandwiched between Elvis and Mozart. Bill Clinton raises a glass in cheer, while Churchill smokes a cigar and Margaret Thatcher looks on.
And surrounding them all are images of some of Man’s defining creations – Stonehenge, the Pyramids and the car.”

For many netizens, it was something new and entertaining. After all, when was the last time you played spot the difference? But for us students, its rather more like a history lesson. Or a history quiz, more like.

Anyway, try it for yourself! How many historical figures can you find?

Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante

Have you tried it? No? Well, go on!

You should be able to find Maozedong, Lincoln, Audrey Hepburn, Ghandi, Van Gogh, Michael Jordan, Qinshihuang and Bruce Lee. You might also find Che Guevara, Mozart, Elvis Presley, Magaret Thatcher and Liu Xiang. There’s also George W. Bush, Clinton, Shakespeare, Napoleon and Marilyn Monroe. There, that’s 18 for you to find, if you haven’t got a move on.

 

Anyway, I was really amused and amazed when I saw this painting. At first glance, it looks like (to quote a family member) “the raft of medusa” kind of painting. I think that comment was referring to the size, mainly, and also the style of painting (colour, brushtrokes, rendering). Some might say it looks like a Renaissance painting, because of some significant objects on the tables. I’d say it’s close to a wonder that the artists managed to squeeze so many historical figures into one painting. And if you study the painting closely, you’ll realise that each figure actually does resemble that particular historical figure remarkably. It is quite amazing, really how the artists managed to do all that. They also included pictures of themselves (3 of them). Scattered around on the floor and on the tables include objects from the different cultures; piano, TV, windmill, gramophone, the chinese ‘ding’ and ‘jue’, typewriter, airplane model, kerosene lamp and a pipe etc. The ‘surroundings’ of the ‘dinner party’ include scenes from Easter Island, Stonghenge, The Pyramids, and what looks like a ‘jiao lou’ (corner tower) of the Forbidden Palace.

 

Trivia: Apparently, many artists are considered famous historical figures. There are 11 artists/painters (not including the three painters who did the painting), out of which 8 we have studied. Try to find them!

 

More trivia: There’s Vladimir Putin, Winston Churchill, Zhou Enlai, Mother Theresa, Hans Christian Andersen, Deng Xiaoping, Tagore, Ghengis Khan, Kofi Anna, Yasser Arafat, and Luciano Pavarotti.

 

Still more trivia!: Also in the painting are Marie Curie, Franklin Roosevelt, Dowager Cixi, Mike Tyson, Confucius, Laozi, Moses, Albert Einstein, Lu Xun, Li Bai, Chiang Kai Shek, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Sun Yat Sen, Karl Marx and Charlie Chaplin.

 

Last bit of trivia: There’s also Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. As well as, you guessed it, Adolf Hitler.

The Guardian did an even better job; they actually dissected it enough to tell us that they way each figure was painted (or at least some), was either significant, or a reference to other works of art.

 

The painting entertained me for 30 minutes the first time I saw it. I dread having to apply Feldman’s to it.

boonny

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EDIT:

I feel compelled to write more.

Dante, as in “Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante”, refers to, obviously, Dante Alighieri, a Florentine poet from the Middle Ages. ‘Divine Comedy’ is his masterpiece, more commonly known as Divina Commedia. It is considered as the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is one of the world’s greatest work of literature. Dante is pictured in the painting, in the top right hand corner, next to the three men looking down at the scene below (the three men are actually the artists).

The Divine Comedy is a 14,000 line long work (poem, i think), that is made up of three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. It tells of Dante’s journey through the three realms of the dead.

Dante and his Divine Comedy’s influences include: works by Eugene Delacriox and Salvador Dali, and parts of comic storylines including X-Men and one of DC comic’s series. It has also been referred to in one of the Guitar Hero volumes(:, one version of Final Fantasy, and in World of Warcraft. It should be rather easy to guess what exactly was the influence of the Divine Comedy on these (relatively) modern works.

Filed under: Inspirations, Others, Uncategorized, Writings   |  1 Comment
Tags: Inspirations, Others, Writings