The garden speaks at the edge of the tide

Label

This arresting figure is both solid and transparent; the pattern of the fabric bleeds through her face and chest. She is present, yet her green-eyed gaze looks beyond us. This work is the first in a series of figures inspired by the surrealist poem “Black Garden,” written in 1915 by Antonin Artaud (French, 1896–1948). Every other work in the series has a line from the poem as its title except for this one, named The garden speaks at the edge of the tide. Perhaps we can see this figure as the narrator, the garden, the one who speaks.

Black Garden

They have blossomed from the lands of death, these
flowers which a long wrought dream has poured
With ashes and the unearthly vapor
Of a bed of night iris shedding petals, One by one, like the
hours of darkness
Through the tidal wave of a terrible season
Into the black water, the slow diamonds
Of the luminous hour glittered strange
Illumination of a capsized sun
The lilies have squandered the whole dark hoard of the
lovely garden pounded by the sea
And the hardened metal of your sacred columns has
trembled
O stems behold the night offering
The key that opens wide her gates of horn to emanations
of delivered souls
—Antonin Artaud, 1915 (France)

From the 2024 exhibition Immersive Worlds: Real and Imagined, curated by Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming and Neely McNulty, Hood Foundation Curator of Education

Exhibition History

Immersive Worlds: Real and Imagined, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 13-December 15, 2024.

Provenance

The artist, Lezley Saar Studio; exhibited at Various Small Fires Gallery, Seoul, South Korea , 2021; sold to present collection, 2021.

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Subjects