Spring, Spring – One Rhinoceros Does Not Make It. Nor, As We Know, Does One Swallow.
The swallow doesn't change much, but even those who do not leave the office, do not leave the highway, do not leave the subway and the suburban queue, those sewn on amen in the bios setup within two weeks are surprised They will notice that they noticed A bird not seen for a long time. Crane, stork, swallow, starling, swing, wolfhog. Something that flies overhead and doesn't scare with sound. Such a surprise will perfectly complement our daily cognitive deficit of contact with the natural environment.
Until several thousand years ago, everyone moved from north to south twice a year for moving herds. For at least ten thousand years, more and more of us have been living without such wanderings. And yet our perceptual apparatus still has a network of receptors to revive which one bird with a certain intensity of sunlight is enough, less by the temperature. Then for a few days (Primo vere) we behave like teenage poets playing sharp shooter until dawn, everywhere we see suddenly erupting buds. Spring, by some miracle, acts on us despite the global flood of cold light, despite the clear, non-virtual sounds of fighting.
Ancient theories pairing elements, seasons and human temperaments (humors) spring (See) mixed with air, warm and moist and with a sanguine disposition, in which warm and moist blood pulsates more alive, pushes to do things not done for a long time. Well, a man would fly a little around the world, look around for a new place.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Italian at the imperial court, title holder since 1564 Hofmaler He had to be alert, to know what the sparrows were chirping about around the Viennese or Prague Hofu. Please do not believe that Arcimboldo was some kind of "pre-surrealist". Outdoors and in nature there is no time and place for any Sur-realism, you have to be conscious all the time, observe what is happening.
As early as 1563, the painter began to paint a modest gift for the imperial majesty: eight paintings modeling the world. Of course, in the impition of the world justly and harmoniously united under the scepter of the Habsburgs. I liked the gift. Supplemented with the panegyric of another Milanese, Giovanni Fonteo left no doubt that Mother Nature gratefully accepts such a reign (unlike, for example, the French usurpation). At the end of the 1960s (16th century), the manor happily played with masquerades and procesions with the participation of the aforementioned paintings and poems.
What does this have to do with the spring that awaits us? Arcimboldo put the paintings into four pairs: Spring (Today in Madrid, or in the Louvre, where a replica from 1573 hangs) responds Aer The only one missing of the four Elements. Quite early, as usual in the case of court and fashionable paintings, a copy was made Entrusts. So we can look him straight in the face. And what will we see? A stationary herd of round bird eyes, looking from an increasingly difficult multimodal observation for us to achieve, involving all the cognitive functions of the body.
Birds look so to survive, more and more often it seems to us that we no longer have to.
If you want to increase your chances of seeing the next spring, watch the birds sometimes.
Graphics: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Aer,(Copy of the lost original), Ver, 1573, oil on board, 76 x 64 cm, Louvre, Paris
Peter Bruegel Big fish devour small ones, 1556, drawing, Albertina, Vienna