The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy   ©2008, 2017 David Keating. Collection of Bernalillo County Public Art Program.

55”H x 70”W x 6”D overall. Two vintage lobby directories, letterpress printed cardboard insets, antique balance scale, wood panel, beveled and etched mirror glass, screws.

This piece is a tongue-in-cheek creation, and uses Dante’s Inferno, the first book of The Divine Comedy, as a departure point. Rather than consigning visitors to one of the nine circles of hell, the A to Z directory on the right allows them to self-direct among a choice of vices assigned to distinct rooms in an imaginary nine-story building. A balance scale at the center suggests the weighing of good and bad deeds and the administration of divine justice.

Love, the single word on the left, supplies the antidote for the numerous shortcomings enumerated on the right. Dante holds up love in its pure form as the highest attribute in Paradiso, the final book in his trilogy of The Divine Comedy. It is listed here under the Greek omega—Ω—to distinguish it in kind from the A to Z listing on the right, and to suggest it as a more aspirational virtue.