Derek Jarman

Modern Nature

Chroma is a meditation on the color spectrum by the celebrated late artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. From the explosions of image and color in In The Shadow of the Sun, The Last of England, The Garden and Wittgenstein, to the somber blacks of his collages and tar paintings, Jarman has consistently used color in unprecedented ways, making his ideas on the subject of interest to filmmakers, film audiences, artists and students alike. Blue, his most personal and innovative film, consists of a compelling soundtrack accompanied by a monochrome blue image and is, among other things, a comment on Jarman's diminishing eyesight due to AIDS. In his signature style, a lyrical combination of classical theory, anecdote, and poetry, Jarman takes the reader through the spectrum, introducing each color as an embodiment of an emotion, evoking memories or dreams. He explains the use of color in Medieval painting through the Renaissance to the modernists and draws on the great color theorists from Pliny to Leonardo. He writes too about the meanings of color in literature, science, philosophy, psychology, religion and alchemy. Read either as a work on color, or a distillation of Jarman's artistic vision, Chroma presents an exciting perspective on the subject.

Chroma

Blue

Published by the House Sparrow Press imprint of Prototype Press, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping is Derek Jarman’s only piece of narrative fiction. Written in 1971, it is a surreal, fabular, lyrical work – a literary fairytale acid-trip road movie hybrid – the energies and details of which influenced much of his later work across media. The story serves as a foundational text, laying out many of the themes, images and styling of Jarman’s work in painting, film and design whilst also being haunted by the then emerging ecological crisis in its juxtaposition of the beauty of nature with the reckless consumption of modernity.

This edition features facsimile images of the story’s handwritten drafts from Jarman’s archive, a link to an exclusive audio recording of Jarman himself reading the story in full, and is comprehensively informed by a vivid foreword from Philip Hoare, a deeply researched afterword by Jarman scholar Declan Wiffen, and a warm memoir by the artist Michael Ginsborg, a close friend of Jarman’s throughout the period of the story’s writing.


Through The Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping 

s an impassioned and provocative celebration of gay sexuality, overflowing with his blunt and uncompromising philosophy of life in the age of AIDS. Photos.

A Saint's Testament

At Your Own Risk

""Paradise haunts gardens," writes Derek Jarman, "and it haunts mine." Jarman's public image is that of a filmmaker of genius, whose work, dwelling on themes of sexuality and violence, became a byword for controversy. But the private man was the creator of his own garden-paradise in an environment that many might think was more of a hell than a heaven - in the flat, bleak, often desolate expanse of shingle that faces the nuclear power station in Dungeness, Kent. Jarman, a passionate gardener from childhood, combined his painter's eye, his horticultural expertise and his ecological convictions to produce a landscape which combined the flints, shells and driftwood of Dungeness; sculptures made from stones, old tools and found objects; the area's indigenous plants; and shrubs and flowers introduced by Jarman himself." "This book is Derek Jarman's own record of how this garden evolved, from its earliest beginnings in 1986 to the last year of his life. More than 150 photographs taken since 1991 by his friend and photographer Howard Sooley capture the garden at all its different stages and at every season of the year. Photographs from all angles reveal the garden's complex geometric plan, its magical stone circles, and its beautiful and bizarre sculptures. We also catch glimpses of Jarman's life in Dungeness: walking, weeding, watering, or just enjoying life." "Derek Jarman's Garden is the last book Jarman wrote. Like the garden itself, it remains as a fitting memorial to a brilliant and greatly loved artist who, against all odds, made a breathtakingly beautiful garden in the most inhospitable of places. It will appeal to all those who are themselves practicing gardeners, as well as to the legions of admirers of an extraordinary man."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Derek Jarman's Garden

Derek Jarman is known as a painter, theatre designer and maker of films such as Jubilee, Caravaggio, The Garden and Edward II. This book consists of a series of autobiographical fragments, interviews and newspapers extracts in which he celebrates homosexuality, articulating the pain, anxiety and rage which many homosexuals have felt under the physical, legal and cultural attacks of recent years.

The filmmaker noted for Sebastiane and Edward II , among other works, discusses his life and art, detailing his sexual awakening, the libidinous excesses of the sixties, his experiences in gay culture, and more.

Dancing Ledge

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NEIL BARTLETT Smiling in Slow Motion is Derek Jarman's last journal, stretching from May 1991 until a fortnight before his death in February 1994. Jarman writes with his trademark humour and candour about friends and enemies, as he races through his final years of film-making, gardening and radical political protest. Written from Jarman's Charing Cross Road flat, his famed garden at Dungeness, and finally from his bed in St Bartholomew's Hospital, Jarman meditates on his own deteriorating health and the loss of his contemporaries. Yet Smiling in Slow Motion is not simply a chronicle of illness and regret: it is, at its heart, one of endeavour, determination and pride.

Smiling in Slow Motion

A film maker meditates--with fear and with humor--on his gradual blindness due to aids and on the fact that he is going to die. By the director of the film, Blue, author of the book, At Your Own Risk.

Testamento di un santo. A vostro rischio e pericolo

In 1986 Derek Jarman started filming The Last of England, his most original and technically innovative film and also his most personal work. Shortly after the filming began, Jarman also began work on this volume of his journals, which contains diary entries and interviews, notes on the script, stills from the filming, and photographs of Derek, his family and friends. Here Jarman writes of his extraordinary childhood and his father's kleptomania; coming to terms with his sexuality; life in the sex and drug-filled sixties and seventies; his early work as a painter and designer for Ken Russell's groundbreaking films; and debut as a director.

Kicking the Pricks

In 1986 Derek Jarman started filming THE LAST OF ENGLAND, one of his most original and innovative films. It is also his most personal work the one with the strongest autobiographical content. Shortly after the filming began, Derek Jarman started work on this book which contains diary entries, interviews and notes from the script. Jarman writes of his extraordianary childhood and his kleptomaniac father; the process through which he came to terms with his sexuality; his early work as painter and designer; and finally his debut as a film director. Throughout, however, the reader will follow Jarman at his most serious as he writes of the corruption of the cinema industry, of the moral and personal consequences of the AIDS virus, and his perception of the down side of Thatcher's Britain.

'The life-affirming expression of an artist engaged in living to the full' The Times Smiling in Slow Motion is Derek Jarman's last journal, stretching from May 1991 until a fortnight before his death in February 1994. Jarman writes with his trademark humour and candour about friends and enemies, as he races through his final years of film-making, gardening and radical political protest. Written from Jarman's Charing Cross Road flat, his famed garden at Dungeness, and finally from his bed in St Bartholomew's Hospital, Jarman meditates on his own deteriorating health and the loss of his contemporaries. Yet Smiling in Slow Motion is not simply a chronicle of illness and regret: it is, at its heart, one of endeavour, determination and pride. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NEIL BARTLETT

The Journals of Derek Jarman, 1991 - 1994

Originally published: Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1994.

Howard Sooley

Derek Jarman's Garden is the last book Jarman ever wrote. It is a fitting memorial to a brilliant and greatly loved artist and film maker who, against all odds, made a breathtakingly beautiful garden in the most inhospitable of places - the flat, bleak, often desolate expanse of shingle overlooked by the Dungeness nuclear power station. Here is Jarman's own record of how the garden evolved, from its earliest beginnings in 1986 to the last year of his life. More than 150 photographs by his friend Howard Sooley capture the garden at all its different stages and at every season of the year, revealing the complex geometrical plan, magical stone circles and the beautiful and bizarre scupltures. We also catch glimpses of Jarman at work on the garden.

Part diary, part observation, part memoir—writings from Derek Jarman's final years.

Originally published: Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1995.

A Book of Color

En 1986 Derek Jarman supo que había contraído VIH. Contra lo que prescribía la época, no se ocultó: se volvió una de las pocas caras visibles de la epidemia y la convirtió en un desafío estético. Filmó seis largometrajes y realizó el último de ellos, Blue (1993), cuando ya había perdido la visión del ojo derecho y padecía serias dificultades para controlar sus movimientos. En este momento, un año antes de su muerte, escribe Croma. Entre las páginas de este original y ecléctico tratado sobre el color, que presta atención al fenómeno tanto en la más humilde de sus manifestaciones materiales, la obtención de pigmentos, como en las condiciones históricas de sus usos y sus diversas funciones en la historia del arte y las ideas, Jarman se despide de la biblioteca, de su jardín, del pasado, del sexo, de sus amigos, de la vida y también de ese color que ya apenas puede entrever. En un singular camino de elegía furiosa, propone a su lector una intimidad intensa y lacerante.

CROMA

Tilda Swinton

Stephen Farthing

Edward Webb-Ingall

Offers insight into the life and working method of the filmmaker, sharing drawings, photographs, poetry, and working scripts.

Derek Jarman

Books

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