Buddha of Medicine

Maybe it's all the renovations or maybe it was my recent trip to the London museums, but the Met doesn't seem to be cutting it these days. Until I saw this. I'd never been to the third floor of the Asian Wing before and I have no excuse. I'll be back again soon because this may be one of the most amazing paintings I've ever seen.
Details from "The Pure Land of Bhaisajyaguru, i.e. the Buddha of Medicine, a painting with a water-based pigment over a foundation of clay mixed with straw, dated to mid Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) of China."

Liber Chronicarum

I've recently become obsessed with the amateurish woodcarvings and colorings from this 1493 incunabulum, one of the best documented early printed books. The wiki says that "approximately 400 Latin and 300 German copies survived into the twenty-first century," but apparently Taschen published a hardcover color reproduction in 2001. MUST GET MY HANDS ON IT but have yet to find it. For now though, I'm keeping busy with the full online one at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Just wish I read latin.

Hernan Bas at the Brooklyn Museum

Deep. Not really, but that's sort of the point. I think there is something magical in the intentional(?) naivety of Bas's works. There is something similar in Elizabeth Payton's work as well; it's almost as if their technical superficiality acts as a foil for something deeper, something closer to the subconscious. They whisper instead of yelling, and they don't vie for your attention because they don't need it. Their world persists long after you stop looking, and, today, that's a rare quality.