One of my favorite receptions of The Odyssey is Romare Bearden’s collage series. If you are unfamiliar with Bearden, he was a mid-20th century African-American artist. He had played around with The Iliad earlier in print form (late 1940’s-early 1950’s). In his Odyssey series, he not only draws in Homer, but also the influences of Matisse and other artists such as Robert S. Duncan (a 19th cent. African-American landscape painter) and his Land of the Lotus Eaters. Below are two great videos on this series from a Smithsonian touring exhibition of them.
- Also very worth a note is the anthology of poetry inspired by Bearden’s Odyssey series.
Ramblings 