In the Garden
View larger image: [+]
DETAILS
Artist:
Dana Velan
Press: [s.n.]
Document Type: Codex
Category:
Date: 1994
Dimensions: 37 x 38 cm
Call Number: N 7433.4 V432 A6 I35 1994 folio
Notes:
The vibrant, lush cover of this book is composed of painted purple, red, and pink flowers, and the binding ends in a cluster of beads, a metal rose, and a green frog with colourful dots on its back. The text of the book is appropriated from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, but the connotations of the words from this classic piece of children’s literature have been altered greatly by the new environment of the artist’s book. The artist’s garden is filled with various animals, insects, and fantastical nature scenes. The inserted image of Adam and Eve suggests that the artist’s garden is something of an Eden, whereas the image of a woman’s anatomy, complete with a rose growing out of her womb, adds an undeniably sexual subtext to all the other images of blooming flowers that are scattered throughout the book. With these ideas of women’s sexuality and a prelapsarian paradise floating in our minds, we begin to consider more complex interpretations of the title The Secret Garden than the original author of that text may have anticipated.
Text record edited by Silvia Russell at 2010-04-13 10:22:18
Press: [s.n.]
Document Type: Codex
Category:
Date: 1994
Dimensions: 37 x 38 cm
Call Number: N 7433.4 V432 A6 I35 1994 folio
Notes:
The vibrant, lush cover of this book is composed of painted purple, red, and pink flowers, and the binding ends in a cluster of beads, a metal rose, and a green frog with colourful dots on its back. The text of the book is appropriated from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, but the connotations of the words from this classic piece of children’s literature have been altered greatly by the new environment of the artist’s book. The artist’s garden is filled with various animals, insects, and fantastical nature scenes. The inserted image of Adam and Eve suggests that the artist’s garden is something of an Eden, whereas the image of a woman’s anatomy, complete with a rose growing out of her womb, adds an undeniably sexual subtext to all the other images of blooming flowers that are scattered throughout the book. With these ideas of women’s sexuality and a prelapsarian paradise floating in our minds, we begin to consider more complex interpretations of the title The Secret Garden than the original author of that text may have anticipated.
Text record edited by Silvia Russell at 2010-04-13 10:22:18
