Dante' s Muse
By Definition
He pronounced it with the 'e', always with the 'e'. Like Dawn-tay.
Dante. Two syllables. One word. One name.
"What's you first name?" I asked him one time after class, watching him sculpt a block of clay into something that maybe just resembled a more shapely block of clay. I was supposed to be washing down the tables.
Sculpting wasn't really my thing. I did mosaics. You know, put together pieces of junk and glasss, steel, tile, aluminum. I made those things into pictures, places only I could see in my mind. That's the beautiful thing about art. Nobody has to understand, not even yourself.
Dante did everything. He sculpted, painted, sketched, paper mache'd. You name an art form, he'd probably had it mastered since the age of four. Dante was exceptional at everything. Maybe it was his intimidation that attracted me most.
"Shh," he'd muttered under his breath. Dante didn't like interruptions. He said they made him feel hurried, and patience was key with Dante. 'Patience will turn this mud and water, this clay, into art. Patience, Frank, patience,' he'd told me once.
But he'd never answered my question.
From the beginning, the very first night course in art that I took at RISD, I knew him as Dante. He instructed us not to call him Mr. Dante, or Sir. Just Dante. It was as simple as that.
I'd soon learn that nothing was ever simple with Dante. He was not a simple man.
Dante was by no means perfect. He might have been, perhaps, the most anal man I'd ever met. Everything done must be done without flaw. The only exception was something that he called instituted flaw. This was, of course, when something was made imperfect on purpose. With Dante, everything was done in the name of art.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Dante was his appearance. He was beautiful, of course, as all suffering artists are made to be. Middle Eastern, though he didn't make his birthplace common knowledge. You could hear it in the slight accent, which was barely there, the result of years of ESL classes and practice. You could hear it in the bitterness with which he spoke. I got the hint that his legacy was something that he liked to keep private, for reasons that would be beyond my understanding.
He had the look of taking one too many pills. His hair, dark and curly, was also wild and unruly. Untameable. It stood on end, giving him the appearance of having been electrocuted, probably due to the fact that he was always running his hand through it.
Yes, hand. Just one. Dante only had one arm. Some might find this strange and intimidating when they first met him. An arm and a half, the left one severed just above the elbow. A stub that was always covered in long sleeve shirts that just dangled because there was nothing to hold the sleeves up. Yes, some might find that intimidating. I found it to be nothing more than an aspect of his person. Dante with two arms would just be wierd. In my mind it was just that simple.
Dante was dark in every sense of the word. By definition, dark means having no light. Brunette. Gloomy. Cheerless. Dismal. Evil. Iniquitous. Wicked. Hard to understand. Obscure. Silent. Reticent. Hidden. Secret.
He was all of these. To me it seemed that Dante was a miserable, miserable man. He was always suffering for his art, the ignorance of his students, the enlightenment that he found he couldn't simply hammer into our heads. He never had peace of mind. We students were inadequate.
The very first day of class. "Do you not know what it means to be an artist?" he asked. Dante always seemed as if he was judging us. He was judging us all the time. This is the way of the artist.
Some cocky bastard in the front row raised his hand. "Of course. It means to make decorative material."
I swear, I think if Dante had had a gun, he would have pulled it out right then and blasted that motherfucker dead. I swear he would have.
"Decorative material? Is that why you're here, to make decorative material? You stupid, stupid boy! Get out of my class!"
Stupid, Stupid Boy looked awfully confused. "What?"
"Get out! You are obviously in the wrong class. We are not here to make decorative material for our mothers." At this point he looked around at every single person in the room. I'd opted to sit on the far right, so his eyes landed on me last. He looked at me like he knew I knew what he was talking about. So he directed the next part of his speech to me. "If you are here, you are here to make art."
I loved the way he used that word. Like art was magic. Like it really, really is.
"Art," he continued, "is not simply throwing together a few random objects and making decorative material. It is about soul."
Dante had a way of making certain words sound like they were on fire. He said them the same way some people would say 'passion' or 'love'. Which I guess was right, because to me that's what art really is.
"Art is about throwing together misunderstanding, rage, passion, anarchy, judgement, intelligence, chaos together. It is about bringing together every emotion you've ever felt and making something that helps you to understand those emotions better. Art," and now he sneered at Stupid, Stupid Boy, "is not decorative material. It is your understanding of the anagogic universe."
Obviously, Stupid, Stupid Boy was the first of us to fail Dante's adequacy test. Just like that, Dante had already proven that most of us were all a waste of time, space, and good clean oxygen. We were not artists. We were sniveling, stuck up children playing pretend that we were artists.
Sometimes, I can't even tell the difference myself.
Dante. Two syllables. One word. One name.
"What's you first name?" I asked him one time after class, watching him sculpt a block of clay into something that maybe just resembled a more shapely block of clay. I was supposed to be washing down the tables.
Sculpting wasn't really my thing. I did mosaics. You know, put together pieces of junk and glasss, steel, tile, aluminum. I made those things into pictures, places only I could see in my mind. That's the beautiful thing about art. Nobody has to understand, not even yourself.
Dante did everything. He sculpted, painted, sketched, paper mache'd. You name an art form, he'd probably had it mastered since the age of four. Dante was exceptional at everything. Maybe it was his intimidation that attracted me most.
"Shh," he'd muttered under his breath. Dante didn't like interruptions. He said they made him feel hurried, and patience was key with Dante. 'Patience will turn this mud and water, this clay, into art. Patience, Frank, patience,' he'd told me once.
But he'd never answered my question.
From the beginning, the very first night course in art that I took at RISD, I knew him as Dante. He instructed us not to call him Mr. Dante, or Sir. Just Dante. It was as simple as that.
I'd soon learn that nothing was ever simple with Dante. He was not a simple man.
Dante was by no means perfect. He might have been, perhaps, the most anal man I'd ever met. Everything done must be done without flaw. The only exception was something that he called instituted flaw. This was, of course, when something was made imperfect on purpose. With Dante, everything was done in the name of art.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Dante was his appearance. He was beautiful, of course, as all suffering artists are made to be. Middle Eastern, though he didn't make his birthplace common knowledge. You could hear it in the slight accent, which was barely there, the result of years of ESL classes and practice. You could hear it in the bitterness with which he spoke. I got the hint that his legacy was something that he liked to keep private, for reasons that would be beyond my understanding.
He had the look of taking one too many pills. His hair, dark and curly, was also wild and unruly. Untameable. It stood on end, giving him the appearance of having been electrocuted, probably due to the fact that he was always running his hand through it.
Yes, hand. Just one. Dante only had one arm. Some might find this strange and intimidating when they first met him. An arm and a half, the left one severed just above the elbow. A stub that was always covered in long sleeve shirts that just dangled because there was nothing to hold the sleeves up. Yes, some might find that intimidating. I found it to be nothing more than an aspect of his person. Dante with two arms would just be wierd. In my mind it was just that simple.
Dante was dark in every sense of the word. By definition, dark means having no light. Brunette. Gloomy. Cheerless. Dismal. Evil. Iniquitous. Wicked. Hard to understand. Obscure. Silent. Reticent. Hidden. Secret.
He was all of these. To me it seemed that Dante was a miserable, miserable man. He was always suffering for his art, the ignorance of his students, the enlightenment that he found he couldn't simply hammer into our heads. He never had peace of mind. We students were inadequate.
The very first day of class. "Do you not know what it means to be an artist?" he asked. Dante always seemed as if he was judging us. He was judging us all the time. This is the way of the artist.
Some cocky bastard in the front row raised his hand. "Of course. It means to make decorative material."
I swear, I think if Dante had had a gun, he would have pulled it out right then and blasted that motherfucker dead. I swear he would have.
"Decorative material? Is that why you're here, to make decorative material? You stupid, stupid boy! Get out of my class!"
Stupid, Stupid Boy looked awfully confused. "What?"
"Get out! You are obviously in the wrong class. We are not here to make decorative material for our mothers." At this point he looked around at every single person in the room. I'd opted to sit on the far right, so his eyes landed on me last. He looked at me like he knew I knew what he was talking about. So he directed the next part of his speech to me. "If you are here, you are here to make art."
I loved the way he used that word. Like art was magic. Like it really, really is.
"Art," he continued, "is not simply throwing together a few random objects and making decorative material. It is about soul."
Dante had a way of making certain words sound like they were on fire. He said them the same way some people would say 'passion' or 'love'. Which I guess was right, because to me that's what art really is.
"Art is about throwing together misunderstanding, rage, passion, anarchy, judgement, intelligence, chaos together. It is about bringing together every emotion you've ever felt and making something that helps you to understand those emotions better. Art," and now he sneered at Stupid, Stupid Boy, "is not decorative material. It is your understanding of the anagogic universe."
Obviously, Stupid, Stupid Boy was the first of us to fail Dante's adequacy test. Just like that, Dante had already proven that most of us were all a waste of time, space, and good clean oxygen. We were not artists. We were sniveling, stuck up children playing pretend that we were artists.
Sometimes, I can't even tell the difference myself.