Gallery of Magic

The Seer (2009)
Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A.)

I saw this piece in person as part of a temporary collection at my local art museum. It took my breath away as it is so smooth despite being mixed media--having porcupine quills, feathers, and collage integrated absolutely seamlessly. So beautiful, fractal-like, natural and yet surreal.

Icarus (1947)
Henri Matisse

When I was a child I loved to make art, and I was in awe but intimidated by "real" artists and great works. My grandma took me to an art museum for the first time I remember, and I saw Icarus, simply made of cut out painted paper, and suddenly art felt accessible, like it was as much mine as anyone's, that so much of a story could be told with so little. Grandma bought me a poster of Icarus and it hung in my room until I left home.

Cult of Beauty (2015)
Scallywag Fox feat. model Rory Finn

Scallywag continues in the beautiful tradition of gay photography. I've loved this whole series since I saw it at about the time it was made. Even in 2015 the narrative of selfies (and the selfie stick specifically) as being a punchline/claim to the "self-absorbtion" of youth was so tired. This portrait, though, offered such a different context that it totally captivates me. It frames the self-portraits as a beautiful, sensual thing, the value of aestheticism purely as it is, without function or further meaning, and therefore as something worth doing. The classical boyish look of the model is also something I've idealized for myself as a trans boy, and something about this figure photographing themselves crystalizes the difference between feeling like I am attracted to this look from an outside perspective versus desiring it for myself and my own body. And even now that I have more realistic expectations about what I may look like, I can relate to this photo as a mythical one, a sort of platonic ideal of my transness.

Atalanta (ca. 1977)
Artist Unknown, likely Betty Miles

I discovered this print while doing research for my library program. I was reading issues of an old publication, the Interracial books for children bulletin, specifically Volume 8, No. 1 (1977), and in an article calling for feminist elementary lesson plans was this amazing print. I'm unsure who the artist is as it wasn't cited in the bulletin, and online searches haven't gotten me far. It's certainly possible if not likely that the artist is Betty Miles, who wrote the story Atalanta for "Free to be You and Me", especially given the initial B in the piece. But whoever it was, I love the patterns, the callback to old woodcuts, and the handcrafted nature of what was probably linocut. The subject itself is also beautiful, magical, and inspiring, and I love that it was specifically created to reflect themes of gender liberation.

Detail of Serving Tray with Cat Sleeping on Lotus Sutra (ca 1920s)
Ōgaki Shōkun

I discovered this in a book I ordered for our library, Divine felines: The cat in Japanese art by Rhiannon Paget for the Ringling Museum. The cat is sleeping on a copy of the Lotus Sutra, one of the most sacred scriptures in Buddhism. It so perfectly illustrates what I feel/understand to be the Ultimate Lesson of especially Zen Buddhism--that enlightenment means the transcendence and letting of even what we consider most sacred. I've had many Thoughts and Feelings on this idea of peace, calm, and deep happiness through detachment, and yet the cat simply does so naturally. As Paget put it, "...does it illustrate one of the key messages of the Lotus Sutra, that all sentient beings may attain enlightenment--some more intuitively than others?"

[Unknown title] (2017)
Akiya Kageichi

Every single piece Akiya Kageichi does is so richly layered and dripping with magic. This one stood out to me for the transformation, the patterns, the occult symbols, I mean, I don't even have anything to say about it because I think it's all there to just absorb. The text they shared with this is "The desire to create a book"--god I hope they do!

Cynocephalus from the Nuremburg Chronical (1493)
Hartmann Schedel

I'm a big fan of werewolves in all kinds. The Cynocephalus is a slightly different myth, basically just meaning "canine-head", but it's close enough that I still love it of course. This appeared in an encyclopedia from the Renaissance taking advantage of the printing press. This fella is so expressive, with such bright eyes and even in the way he sits, it lends such a human quality to something mythical and a subject that's so typically depicted as monstorous, especially back then.

The Sun is Passing the Sign of Pisces. (1906/7)
M.K. Čiurlionis

This painting reminds me of my grandma, not because she's a Pisces or anything but just because of the color scheme and painting style. She grew up in rural Alaska and they caught and butchered their own food, and so she was very fond of wild caught Alaskan salmon. The reflection here of the salmon in the water and the skies feels like a way she would depict magic and mysticism. (Hm, even the stars in the Pisces symbol here remind me of the Alaska flag).

Rust Red Hills (1930)
Georgia O'Keeffe

When I was a kid we had a big poster of O'Keeffe's poppy in our front stairwell, which probably started my interest in her work, but it's her desert scenes that really capture my heart. I love the southwest deserts, and Taos specifically, and I've been down there to paint a few times too. The desert's inherently magical, and I think O'Keeffe has just the right level of abstaction to bring it out in painting. Not sure what it is about this one that grabs me, maybe the inclusion of the red and the teal-blue in the rocks.

Curl-Up (1951)
M.C. Escher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curl-up

Allegory of Geometry (1649)
Laurent de La Hyre

I took a single art history class in community college and visited a museum for an assignment. Despite never liking neoclassical art, I was drawn in to this piece. It's part of a series on the seven classical liberal arts--Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Astronomy, Music, Arithmetic, and Geometry. I'm still captivated by the too-perfect, gigantic blocks.

Two Tigers Taking the 10.20 Train to Timbuktu - Animalia (1986)
Graeme Base

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Tension Tamer - Celestial Seasonings (1991)
Robert Giusti

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