Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky
Series
14. Baba Yaga
The Hut on Fowl's Legs
67" x 67" - 170 x 170 cm
Acrylic on Canvas
Listen
Baba Yaga Explained
With Permission: 2024 Canadian National Brass Project, Recorded at St. Anne's Church, Toronto, ON Aug 29 - Sept 2, 2016 canadiannationalbrassproject.com
Narration by: Sam Rosenthal & Michelle Piller
Narration by: Sam Rosenthal & Michelle Piller
Viktor Hartmann imagined the witch’s dwelling as a clock, an ornate hut poised on chicken legs, forever turning to confront whoever approaches. Modest Mussorgsky answered with percussive drive, cut-time ticks splintering into jagged bursts, the measure fractured by cackling accents.
Arciniega stages the legend as a threshold. A wanderer stumbles among bones and halts before the hut as clawed trees lean inward. Rhythm pricks the nerves. Shards and shadows slash the field. The hut pivots on talons, part shrine, part trap, its doorway a dark mouth waiting.
Severed heads and rounded skulls echo the suite’s recurring circles, but here the motif darkens. Geometry from earlier promenades returns as menace. Triangular shards strike like arrows. Arcs twist into claws. The laughter of Baba Yaga seems to rattle the branches themselves, the air taut with mockery and threat.
Arciniega’s reading honours the fable while granting it weight. This is not simply a tale of pursuit, but a reckoning with choice, the instant before the story tips toward flight or defiance. Time tightens here, sharpening attention to fear and courage, and preparing the passage toward the blazing finale to come
Arciniega stages the legend as a threshold. A wanderer stumbles among bones and halts before the hut as clawed trees lean inward. Rhythm pricks the nerves. Shards and shadows slash the field. The hut pivots on talons, part shrine, part trap, its doorway a dark mouth waiting.
Severed heads and rounded skulls echo the suite’s recurring circles, but here the motif darkens. Geometry from earlier promenades returns as menace. Triangular shards strike like arrows. Arcs twist into claws. The laughter of Baba Yaga seems to rattle the branches themselves, the air taut with mockery and threat.
Arciniega’s reading honours the fable while granting it weight. This is not simply a tale of pursuit, but a reckoning with choice, the instant before the story tips toward flight or defiance. Time tightens here, sharpening attention to fear and courage, and preparing the passage toward the blazing finale to come
When I painted Baba Yaga, I thought of the moment when fear sharpens into choice, the shiver before flight, the breath before defiance. It is the moment of standing in tension as we decide to hold firm or to run, terror and courage converging.– Paula Arciniega
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