The Sluice at Serbonne (La Vanne a Serbonne) 1923

Curator: What do you think? Editor: My first impression? A delicate quietude. There's a real sense of stillness held within those tangled lines. It feels like a secret moment. Curator: I feel that. The piece is called "The Sluice at Serbonne", an etching created in 1923 by André Dunoyer de Segonzac. It’s interesting how Segonzac has captured the French countryside with such a spare technique. Editor: Sluices… gateways for water, for controlling flow. Looking at it now, the image holds that liminality too—like a threshold. Water is a very loaded image, representing, the ebb and flow of the unconscious. The reflections…they are a sign of what? Is the future in front of us or behind? Curator: Well, water’s symbolism goes deep, no pun intended. Perhaps Segonzac was considering the intersection between man and nature, the controlling of nature's energy? Editor: Or the inherent, maybe futile attempt to regulate nature’s untamable power? Notice how the architecture is geometric and clearly defined but then everything in the natural environment is drawn in tangled thin lines that break up shapes rather than clearly defining them. Is he playing with the distinction between the artifice and the fluidity of nature? It also brings to mind traditional Chinese landscape painting where water also holds symbolic value, carrying spiritual significance. Curator: The layering and the scratchy, energetic mark-making—the medium allows such beautiful possibilities. The ink really conveys the feeling of a chilly day near the water, perhaps capturing something beyond just a picturesque scene. It seems the image and the method speak a related language. Editor: Etching is, in itself, a kind of revealing, stripping back an image… revealing something perhaps buried beneath the surface. Segonzac presents us with more than just a landscape. It feels like an exploration of the self and our place in the natural order of things. An interesting tension between order and chaos. Curator: Very beautifully said, I feel enlightened to what I was blind to earlier. Editor: Well, hopefully that brings some deeper dimension for visitors as they stand before it.