Come with me to the San Diego Museum of Art
Wonders of creation art exhibition, some highlights, a vlog, and an exciting book.
Join me for an outing to the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park.
This is one of my favorite art museums in California. One of my all time favorite paintings lives here, which I’ll share with you below.
The current special exhibition is Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World and it truly was more than I imagined it would be going in.
I had planned lunch at the cafe before heading home but I spent so much time (still not enough) in this exhibit I had to skip lunch.
I don’t know what I was expecting but there were so many manuscripts, astrological art and science, and mystical pieces that I was in awe. Not to mention this brilliant carpet I couldn’t stop staring at (see it in the vlog). The skill some people have is a gift from somewhere beyond and it’s one of my greatest joys in life to come across their creations.
Me pretending I can vlog again.
Some favorites ~
From the Wonders of Creation exhibit
This cyanotype by Ala Ebtekar made in 2024, titled Zenith II. It’s an “acrylic over charcoal underdrawing on cyanotype exposed by moonlight on canvas.” Moonlight!
The canvas was quite large, I would guess 5 feet. I would love to see the process of creating it.
This manuscript piece titled A magician conjures the spirits. India, 1560.
I’m really intrigued about what’s going on here. I wish the exhibits had explanations for each piece and not just the title info. There were so many drawings of these mystical events. I can picture the person drawing this and watching this happen. What happened next? Does it say here? If you can read this, let me know. :)
Zodiac coins minted by Jahangir. Agra, India, 1605-27, gold. 11 total, missing Aries.
An astrologer, India, ca. 1825. I want to know what he has to say, don’t you?
Winged people of the island of Zabaj (Java). by Muhammad Husayn. Iranian, 19th-early 20th century. This is a page from the lithograph copy of The Wonders of Creation and the Rarities of Existence - Iran, 1866.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Fairies? And the merman shown in my video above.. So we have records of astrologers, magicians, fairies, mermaids, a centaur, and other interesting creatures in a book about the wonders of creation.
According to the title wall of the exhibition, it says:
"Nearly 800 years ago in Iraq, in the wake of the Mongol conquests, an Islamic judge and professor named Zakariyya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini wrote the world into a book. A cosmography containing an encyclopedic description of the universe from the heavens to the earth, sought to record all existence, from ordinary encounters to unfathomable anomalies…”
Take me to this mystical world of wild imagination. I can’t get enough.
My fav painting in the museum
Eve of Saint John by Peter Hurd
I mentioned this painting in my solstice celebration post from summer. I won’t repeat myself from my other post but I’ll mention that I went to a lecture at the museum once on Peter Hurd as I didn’t know anything about him prior to this painting and found out he was married to Henriette Wyeth, the daughter of the painter N.C. Wyeth, sister to painter Andrew Wyeth, and a painter herself. They also lived in New Mexico alongside Georgia O’Keeffe. I tried finding information on whether or not they knew each other but you can see similarities in the color tones of their work and the influence of the southwest.
It reminds me of the interesting web of relations among the impressionists and their artist colonies in France and the eastern US.
I love how I can so vividly imagine what it feels like to be in this painting just by looking at it. The smell of the desert on a summer evening after a hot day. The feel of a breeze that’s not quite cool but still a relief from a blistering day. The way the dry earth feels when walking on it- crunching sand and clay dirt underfoot mixed with dried up desert plants that have blown underfoot, with possibly a spiky piece or two sticking to her shoes. It’s probably really quiet with little chirps from insects and faint sounds of scuttling lizards in dry brush. And all of the stars in the sky- once the first one pops, the sky rapidly blooms with constellations.
I’ll always be a forest lover but the deserts of the southwest have a palpable mystical air that you don’t feel anywhere else.
Some black and white images from Balboa Park
Have you been to Balboa Park? According to this article, Forbes recently named it one of the top 20 (at no. 3) attractions in the US. I have to agree.
A book
Last week I purchased this book, Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science.
This book is a study on two perspectives of nature with Emily’s artistic approach and Charles’ scientific approach and how they intertwine. It looks so interesting and I plan to do a post about it when I finish. If you’d like to read it too it would be fun to discuss in the future post!
x,
Courtney
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