Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ‘Hunters in the Snow (Winter)’ (1565)
Tag Archives: animals
Romanian New Year’s masks
In Romania, the ceremonial of the symbolic renewal of the calendar year at the turn of the year, the night between December 31 and January 1, is called the Burial of the Old Year or, more recently, New Year’s Eve.
On New Year’s Eve, when evening falls, there appear ‘the disguised ones’. In some villages in Bucovina (northeastern Romania), ‘the disguised ones’ are said to walk through the fog. They bear masks that help them personify wolves, goats, little horses, stags, the beauties of the New Year, devils, bear leaders etc. As soon as the evening falls, the large group divides into small groups that go wassailing from door to door, till dawn, when the New Year is finally installed.
Simon Starling
Simon Starling, ‘Inverted Retrograde Theme, USA (House for a Song bird)’ (2002)
This installation references a housing project in Puerto Rico which was designed by Austrian architect Simon Schmiderer (1911-2001) in the 1960s. Schmiderer developed a series of houses made of building blocks without doors or windows to further integrate the outside and inside spaces, but the rise of crime in the 1970s forced locals to add elaborate barriers onto Schmiderer’s designs. In Inverted Retrograde Theme, USA, Simon Starling recreates two of the existing homes on a smaller scale and inverts them like birdcages; these models sit atop tree trunks that extend from the gallery’s floor.
