JENNIFER BARTLETT | IN THE GARDEN #108

Jan Hashey, New York (gift of the artist)

Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Reader's Digest Collection, New York

Locks Gallery, Philadelphia

Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York

Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above)

"Like so much else in life that turns out well, In the Garden was born of a comedy not of errors but of expectations.

In the winter or 1979-80, Jennifer Bartlett decided to rent a villa in Nice. She had never been to the south of France before. Her ideas of it were derived primarily from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night. The sun would shine, the beach would be both beautiful and empty, hospitalities would run in tandem from dusk till dawn, living well would be the best revenge. In reality the villa was in a very dull section of town. Indoors, it was cold and damp. Outdoors, it rained almost every day. Nobody in his right mind was in Nice.

[...] What we have seen in the end is a concise encyclopedia in which a given scene, itself of no interest whatsoever, is made to spell our a vast repertory of expression. It is upon feeling, and not variation, that In the Garden relies for its hold upon us.

[...]That ratty little garden harbored all that is needed for art. Earth, water, and sky were there. So was the human presence, in no matter how ridiculous a form. In fact the history of the universe was there, if you knew how to read it and were not put off by the packaging. In the Garden gets away to a very quiet start... But in no time at all it picks up color, picks up speed, and picks up power... Art here teaches us, as so often before, that where there is nothing to enjoy there is everything to enjoy."

John Russell, "Introduction", In the Garden, New York 1982, pp. 5-8