Letter from the Editor

Dante Divine Comedy

Never let it be said that here at Dantemag , we are parochial and conventional – we like to break down the barriers across the countries within continents and the barriers separating our great world continents, whether it be in art, travel, culture, business or philosophy, not just horizontally so to speak but vertically, namely, from a historical perspective. What can we learn from each other and in particular from our Eastern, specifically our Chinese friends. We are proud to feature as our next cover article , Qin Chong, one of our foremost Chinese contemporary artists who propounds his theory of ‘Black and White-ism’. For him it is a matter of principle – how can the basic opposite poles of colour and means of filling space translate to art, to philosophy, to how society sees itself and how as individuals we use these insights to inform our lives and our behaviour. We invite two other Chinese contemporary artists to join this debate, Zhang Yu and Li Tiejun, who give their own fascinating contributions and elaborations of the debate. Not content with these three giants of the contemporary Chinese art scene, we approached one of China’s well-known philosophers Xia Kejun and he has given us his intense insights into how the phenomenon of Black and White-ism makes us draw on previous Chinese philosophical schools of thought that instilled traditional pen and ink art from centuries ago and how contemporary art in China must initiate a new silent and subtle revolution that reaffirms the individual investing in naturalness in the face of globalised uniformity.

To celebrate further our exploration of ‘Black and White-ism’, Dantemag collaborated with students at the IUSVE in Venice Italy (part of the Faculty of Communication. Università Salesiana Pontificia of Rome). We asked them to come up with a possible design for our cover, with reference to the art of Qin Chong, our featured artist. We are very pleased to announce that Giovanni Davoli’s design has been chosen to grace our Dantemag ART issue. However we decided that the students’ other ideas were so deserving that we have included a top ten spread inside. WELL DONE GUYS! We would like to thank the faculty representatives and in particular Lecturer in History of Art and Design, Professor Alessandro Bigardi for their kind and invaluable collaboration on this project.

To follow our Chinese philosopher, we must learn how injecting the void together with obscuring the darkness can lead us to greater introspection about ourselves, our culture, our ways of thinking. We must silently transform in a silent revolution, open our eyes to the direction our society is going in, through a new prism, that straddles the East and the West. Enjoy our trans-cultural treat, a veritable banquet for the mind and eye!

All of this and more in the next issue of Dantemag dedicate to the Art world.

For a new renaissance in us.

Massimo Gava
chief editor
Dantemag.