April

For the month of April, there’s a huge day for people with a sense of humor, the first day of April, April Fools’ Day, According to the conventions, people would play pranks on each other or make some practical jokes. It might be shocking that April Fool’s Day is actually not an official festival in any country, yet it has been celebrated among citizens as an entertaining event for many years. What’s more surprising is that the origin of April Fool’s Day has been a question that puzzled people for a long time. There are different versions and views about its origin.

Gregorian Calendar

Many people state that April Fools’ Day started in the year 1582. It was the year when Pope Gregory XIII decided to switch their calendar system, from Julian Calendar to Gregorian Calendar, the calendar we use today. Unlike the Gregorian Calendar, which starts a year from January, the Julian Calendar actually had its start of a new year in April, which is around the time of the Spring Equinox.

However, many people in France were still celebrating the April New Year, who were therefore been laughed at, and referred to as the “April Fools.”

Hilaria Festival

Some also believe that April Fools’ Day actually came from an ancient Roman festival, the Hilaria Festival, which was on the 25th of March. Hilaria was the Latin word for “joyful”, and we can also clearly see that it relates to the word “hilarious.” It was a day of relaxation, which means during that day, there would be no school, no work, no nothing but joy.

This festival was made for the goddess Cybele, sometimes known as “Magna Mater”, or the “great goddess” who’s worshiped as a mother goddess of all. It was believed that her lover, Attis, had his resurrection on the 25th, after three days of his death. Therefore, Hilaria Festival was a quite important festival in Ancient Rome, it not only related to a tradition, but religious worship also.

The Humor of Nature

Some people declare that April Fools’ Day is a symbolization of Nature. These people think that during the springtime, the weather’s erratic and unpredictable. Hence, the people created such a festival to represent how nature’s “fooling” people around.

Of course, there are also other theories about how exactly April Fools' Day came to what it is now, and if you like to, you can search them online, there are plenty. But no matter how it became the way it is, it's still a festival we like, and it brings us a lot of humor, joy, and happiness.

Although April Fool's Day is not an official holiday, SPAS teachers and students still tricked each other in a variety of ways to celebrate it. There were many things such as teachers suddenly announcing an exam on that day as a prank. The most exciting trick this year was when Alan Chan, our very own Chief Artist of WeUs, tricked Mr. Terebey. He separated the Housecup into smaller pieces and hid them as an April Fool's Day "gift" for Mr. Terebey. This act made the whole school laugh and engaged in April Fool's Day.

The details of this tricking events is that Alan wrote a lot of little notes to confuse Mr. Terebey on April Fool's Day, such as "Not here," "You checked the cctv don't you, "and "You followed the cctv don't you." Then, not surprisingly, Mr. Terebey did search the entire school. Alan gave Mr. Terebey a second clue: it is where it was. Mr. Terebey soon went to the place where he used to hide his housecup, the fire hose boxes. But unfortunately, the housecup was not there. However, all the seemingly related hint is actually an April Fool's joke. Before April Fool's Day is over, Alan reminds Mr. Terebey that April 1st is April Fool's Day. It was indeed a good show.

March

Seeing as the main topic of our magazine this month is spring, I thought it would be interesting to look deeper into the history of this type of art. Topics like spring, rebirth, and growth have been a form of mainstream art concept that has evolved over time. The first such movement was that of Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, and Naturalism. These movements are all very similar yet different at the same time, so this month we will only look at one of such art forms: Naturalism.

Naturalism first began to emerge as an artistic movement around the 1820s and gradually expands, eventually turning into what we might now call Impressionism. Naturalism mainly focuses on the natural world and expresses how humans are a small part of nature. Most Naturalist paintings involve the landscape or real-life organism, while naturalist literature conveys a detailed account of the world. Such artworks tend to gravitate towards a realistic view of the world while trying to use vivid colors. Naturalism was an attempt to represent life as it was. Naturalist works focus on small pictures of life. Rural Naturalism, for example, often features scenes of rural life and paintings of the countryside. Some naturalist paintings can look like photographs because of how realistic they seem.

The development of Naturalism was profoundly impactful to modern art and even more so to the development of photography and you will find that most photographic art expresses some elements of Naturalism. To understand all that has been said above, it is best that we take a look at some Naturalist paintings.

History — Painting Appreciation

This is a piece from the early Naturalist movement by John Constable. Instead of earlier works, notice painting does not focus on the man on the cart, instead focusing on the nature that envelopes him. 

Observe the amount of detail that is present in this painting, the soft curves of the river-banks, the clear reflections in the water, the foliage in the background, and the sunlit depths of the field beyond, where a group of people are at work.

This piece of work is one of the earliest and most important of the Naturalist movement and it embodies all of its elements. And it is works such as The Hay Wain were celebrated for presenting an apparently informal view of the natural world while simultaneously drawing out its emotive and poetic qualities.