Hey!
Hey!!!
I just went to the “Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur” exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum tonight and it blew my mind. I’ve always loved traditional Indian painting, but I’ve never seen any in person, and I just don’t understand how these were painted.
SAAM provides magnifying glasses because all of the paintings have details that even strain the eye of a person with 20/20 eyesight. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and almost broke my eyeballs staring at them for so long. Most of the paintings were done in gouache with some gold leaf, and some of the details were too tiny to even resolve with the magnifying glass. I’ve painted in gouache, and used extremely fine brushes, but I’ve never done anything like this. I’m thinking that the finest paintbrushes they used had only one hair, and it had to be very thin. A human eyelash would not be fine enough. Maybe they used fairy pubes. Hell if I know.
Trust my husband to find the one naked hoo-hoo hiding among probably 10,000 tiny painted females in the exhibit. He had me check with the magnifying glass to see if it was really unclothed. It was! I challenge you to find it if you go. It’s like a way more fun and challenging game of “Where’s Waldo?”
There’s also a mind-blowing collection of sculpture in the main atrium. Some of the sculptures date as far back as 100-200 AD.
I went with friends tonight, but I’m going to return later with my sketch pad and stay for hours.
If you are in the greater Seattle area, GO!
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