Curatorial notes
Curator: So here we have Edward Burne-Jones's "Adder's Tongue," painted around 1905. Editor: It's instantly dreamlike. A little garden scene held within what looks like a jewel-toned locket. The colours feel both delicate and a bit ominous, that’s quite a juxtaposition. Curator: It is a symbolic rendition of the Fall, very much in the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic. We see Adam and Eve rendered with a focus on idealised beauty. Consider the period and its social contexts. Editor: I notice how vulnerable they appear. Like kids playing dress-up with leaves as fig leaves, not fully aware of the weight of the serpent’s advice. I feel their innocent ignorance. Curator: Exactly. It is crucial to see their depiction within larger discussions of gender roles and morality of that era, Burne-Jones certainly positioned the male and female form through symbolic lenses. How might that dialogue shape how we read it now? Editor: It brings up such interesting issues. Burne-Jones certainly wanted to give us beauty to distract from some deeper meaning—this scene looks as if love could overcome death; what it is instead is the origin of both. Curator: Yes! Note too the symbolism of the title, and the potential nod to language itself being part of this original sin and power imbalance! Editor: This circular composition is also key; that cyclical nature to paradise, how every up contains a down and the other way around. How change means something dies and something new emerges. Even looking at it has stirred all of that in me! Curator: Well said. Thinking about art and its relationship to critical discourse invites vital investigations into how our present reinterprets these moments and continues crucial cultural conversations. Editor: Art gives our feelings, especially complicated ones, a place to be born; for me, this piece today reminds me that everything important feels lovely, fragile, and catastrophic, all at once.