Paradise of Dante, Series 2

Same overall comment as for Series 1.

Of course, Dante's Paradise had to tempt me. Hell is immanent in its torments; Purgatory is immanent in its moderation; Paradise, on the other hand, is transcendent.

Dante continues to transport us into the mystical rapture. This realm beyond the senses and reason remains perceptible, however, as transcendence becomes sensory thanks to the evocation of ever-increasing light, even though it is unbearable from the outset. Thanks also to extreme speeds, Dante has not left one heaven before finding himself in the next, flooded with increased light. Moreover, this overall ecstasy is disrupted by theological militancy and documented political anger.

In literature, it was possible, as writing has proven, to suggest this through words, which are capable of conveying contradiction. Light, colors, and the strokes of a paintbrush cannot do this, even with Dante as a guide. This is why I proceeded in five stages [five series], defeated in advance, but undoubtedly seduced by the impossibility of the project.

The ultimate visual challenge is the light throughout the thirty-three cantos of Paradise. From the outset, it is unbearably bright, yet it intensifies with each canto. What linguistic tricks could offer the poet was lacking for the painter. The undertaking was experienced as a kind of intrusion into the author's mind. To embrace its mystery without understanding it. And see. The same adventure applies to speed, which in Dante's work increases constantly.

A first series of 33 cantos took on color on paper and without faces, evoked only by the initials of first names: D for Dante, B for Beatrice.
The second series took the risk of depicting faces, but using Indian ink. The third series brought together faces and color on canvas.

The painter, however, has an advantage over the poet: he is the poorer of the two. The artist, at any time, only has for himself the tip of the brush, a drop of paint, a spot on the canvas. Because of this, probably, he can cross most tightly time with eternity. Micheline Lo took the most narrow-tipped brush, a pen; the poorest of colors, black; and on the emptiest surface, white. Enough to risk the beatific visionary experience.

When he saw this second suite in black and white of the Paradis, more than when he saw the first or the third ones, in color, the historian Marcello Verdenelli, author of La teatralità della scrittura, came upon the final title for his introduction to Micheline Lo's exhibition in Cingoli, in the Marche: La luce senza centro. He tells us how it unfolded before him: "Il Paradiso dantesco mi si rivelava in tutta la sua dirompente, incontenibile, forza segnica. Un segno che procedeva per improvvise quanto suggestive accelerazioni et riprese. E non potevo naturalmente che riportare tutta quelle vibrante tensione segnica a un'idea di perfezione che si accompagna comunque al Paradiso. Un'idea di perfezione che usciva, che debordava da qualsiasi coordinata spazio-temporale, così come pure da qualsiasi riferimento geometrico. L'unica figura che resisteva in questo generale annulamento era quella del ‘cerchio'. Un ‘cerchio' che, nelle sue diverse velocità concentriche, lasciava intravedere pure l'idea, la forma della Trinità. E une luce vorticosa, intensa, avvolgente, musicale, a riempire quel ‘cerchio', quelle spazio che non era più spazio."

Verdenelli also perceived how the painter of the beatitudes of the cerebral landscape had to find her only recourse, her "ragione poetica" (we would say: her pictorial subject) in the "salto" and the "scarto" — the leap and the swerve — already suggested by Dante: "E cosi, figurando il paradiso, / convien saltar lo sacrato poema, / come qui trova suo cammin riciso." (XXIII, 61-63.) Commenting on her Suite espagnole, Micheline Lo had previously exalted that leap of the black and of the white, "[...] this intense relationship, immediate and unchangeable, [where] both, without distinction, occupy with as much ability the sites of void and of brightness."