Word: iliad
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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From the Trojan siege that spawned Homer's Iliad to the Luftwaffe bombing that inspired Picasso's Guernica, war has long served as a midwife for art. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the ensuing horror found expression in the most traditional Afghan art form?the Oriental rug. Two Afghan tribal groups, the Chahar Aimaq and the Baloch, expanded their color palette and changed their subject matter to reflect the jarring reality that their homeland had become a battlefield. Over the next decade, they produced carpets featuring rocket launchers, machine guns, bombs, and helicopter gunships. In lesser numbers...
Usually, the latter matters far more. Rarely will a reader reject the words of the Iliad or War and Peace because of an ugly cover, and rarely will an even remotely judicious reader buy a book based solely on pretty cover art. In this show, even when the books do have content, the “reader’s” attention is inexorably drawn towards the visual aspects of the presentation—a tendency of which the artists seem fully aware, and even to embrace. McCarthy, for instance, says in her artist’s statement that...
...music is far from irrelevant. In fact, war and music have always had an intimate bond. One of the greatest poems of all time, ?The Iliad,? is essentially an epic song about war. As the first line goes: ?Rage?Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus? son Achilles/ murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses?. America?s Civil War produced its share of popular compositions, from the war songs of the North (?The Battle Hymn of the Republic? and ?All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight?) to the fighting odes of the South (?Oh I?m a Good Old Rebel?). Civil...
...literally hundreds of Einhorn's international coterie of friends and true believers, and he went after every last one of them. The mere thought of the task was daunting, but DiBenedetto, an amateur sculptor and book collector, has no problem with long stories. He owns multiple copies of the Iliad - six or eight, he can't remember which. Einhorn didn't have some burned-out patronage stiff after him. The Unicorn was being tracked by a hard-boiled, law-and-order renaissance...
Shanower may not create the poetry of "The Iliad" but he tells a story in a straightforward, clean manner that will keep you reading through one sitting. To do it he gives the characters personalities: Paris as adolescent dumbbell, Helen as the ultimate trophy wife who remains stately even while succumbing to an absurd love, and Agamemnon, the opportunist who seeks to consolidate his power. Thus, inevitable historical events seem born out of human mistakes and desires. Throw in some PG-13 sex scenes and a few animal sacrifices, and you've got a good book...