I’ve always struggled, since I went to art school, with the question of: What is the career of making paintings in the twenty-first century? Of sitting alone in a room and painting in a way people did 500 years ago, in the world of technology and movies and stuff. So I always wanted to make works that are about now, but then show that they’re coming out of the history of art and are tied to art history… And to say, look, see how the history of art keeps moving forward, and it’s still connected… It’s sort of a way to try to prove that painting matters.

Sandow Birk is an artist whose works have dealt with contemporary life in its entirety, exploring themes such as inner city violence, graffiti, political issues, travel, war, and prisons, as well as surfing and skateboarding. Some of his work specifically engages with the kinds of “great books” that we explore here at the Spouter-Inn, including an illustrated version of Dante’s Divine Comedy, reworked with Marcus Sanders, from 2005, as well as the American Qur’an, published in 2016.

Sandow joins us to discuss these two projects and the impulse of reading a centuries-old text and saying: What if this were here and now? What would that look like?

SHOW NOTES.

Sandow Birk’s website includes illustrations from the Divine Comedy, the American Qur’an, and other works we discuss.

The Divine Comedy. [Bookshop.]

American Qur’an. [Bookshop.]

A talk Sandow gave about the American Qur’an (introduced by Karla Mallette, who spoke with us about Purgatorio!)

Gustave Doré’s illustrations for the Divine Comedy.

Matthew Collins, ed.: Reading Dante with Images.

Dante’s Inferno, the animated film.

Kent Monkman.

The Chester Beatty.

Arion Press and their editions of The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde and Moby-Dick.

Machado de Assis: The Posthumous Memories of Brás Cubas.

Roberto Bolaño: 2666.

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