If you've ever dreamed of telling the corrupt, lazy, selfish, mean, incompetent, two-faced people affecting your life exactly how you feel about them (but fear retaliation) you'll understand some of the motivation behind Rauschenberg's and Navone's interpretation and contemporization of this epic poem. If Dante felt redeemed sprinkling the worthless citizens of his day about the firey rings of literary hell, perhaps we would all feel a little better doing the same with our own adversaries.

Navone's visual is extremely dark. From a distance the works could be simple, black rectangles. Up close it's like Where's Waldo. Embedded within 34 images are Dante and his guide, Virgil, and numerous people, places, and events particular to Professor Navone's experiences professionally, socially and personally. Take your time with these and look closely. From relative darkness a network of lines reveals countless recognizable shapes and objects. The breadth of inkmarks alone is astonishing.

Rauschenburg, known for advancing the technique of photo transfer which enabled him to repeat images in his work which influenced the later work of Andy Warhol's repetitive silkscreens, draws from a pool of information particular to him and the 1960s: the Cold War, McCarthy, his divorce and intense relationship with Jaspar Johns and his homosexuality. In a time when a non-traditional lifestyle could mark you as a Communist, The Inferno was a template in which Rauschenberg secured messages about himself and the purveyors of Cold War suspicion using contemporary visual metaphor. Meaning, in a time when personal expression could bring severe repercussions, planting "evidence" within subjective imagery was a win-win situation. Rauschenberg could exploit his adversaries and they were probably none the wiser.

Two quotes from Rauschenberg summarized this exhibit for me:

(1) I think painting is more like the real world if it's made out of the real world.

(2) The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

For readers of Dante's Inferno, the unlucky ones were real people--people they knew of or perhaps knew personally--rather than ficticious characters from a poet's imagination. Placing leading 14th-century figures (literary found objects reflecting the "real world"?) within a contemporary context allowed misery to hit closer to home: if Pope Boniface VIII ended up in the Eighth Circle, who's to say you couldn't be next to dance in a lake of fire?

Through visual interpretation of the poem, Navone illustrates events and people from his lifetime and experiences as does Rauschenberg with found images from the news and pop culture. All three capture historical events in their work and therefore serve as witnesses to their own, as well as, collective experiences. You needn't be overly familiar with Dante's poem to enjoy this exhibit, nor do you need to know what each image represents or identify who's who within the prints and drawings. I think what's most important is an understanding that no matter how far removed we are from Florence, Italy circa 1304, human nature appears quite consistent and somewhat predictable. Today's jerks are no different than the jerks in the Middle Ages.