Derek Jarman, 1942-1994

By Toby Berryman

Caravaggio, 1986, film still from trailer (featuring the artist)

Painter, filmmaker, actor, writer, production designer, photographer, music-video-director, screenwriter, costume designer, activist, maverick auteur, and even gardener; the diverse yet prolific career of Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (born eighty-two years ago this very Wednesday) encompassed the role of ‘artist’ in an extensive fashion. Although his career was ended prematurely at fifty-two by an AIDS-related illness, his 1986 HIV-positive diagnosis only spurred on his public activism and, relatedly, his artistic output. It is little wonder therefore, that when Prospect Cottage, his iconic Dungeness home and garden, was listed for sale in 2018, a vast public campaign raised over three million pounds to save the property and its contents for the nation. BAFTA hailed his ‘Outstanding Contribution to Cinema’, critics lauded his oeuvre, and collaborator Tilda Swinton has deemed him “an angel”, yet Jarman instead saw himself solely as “a witness” – a testament both to his humility and the reflective focus of his work.

Whilst Jarman passed his final years in a modest Victorian fisherman’s hut within the shadow of a nuclear power station, his youth was rather different. Privately educated at Hordle House Prep School, before boarding at Canford and studying at Kings College London, he had already begun to paint seriously before he continued his education at The Slade School of Fine Art. Following earlier commissions for teachers and colleagues, he received his break in 1971 as a production-designer for pioneering filmmaker Ken Russell. Over the ensuing two decades, Jarman’s career transcended formal disciplinary boundaries as he experimented with media, discovered burgeoning technologies, and developed a prominent voice for gay rights against the backdrop of the heightening AIDS crisis.

It is, however, Jarman’s work on film for which he is best known. From the exclusively Latin dialogue of his narrative debut Sebastiane (1976) to the punk-focus of Jubilee (1978) and the anachronistic portrayal of the life of Caravaggio (1986), Jarman’s cinema was radical, at times homoerotic, and remarkably seminal for film-history. Jarman directed Tilda Swinton’s on-screen debut, brought legendary actor Laurence Olivier out of retirement for his last screen-performance in War Requiem (1989), and even united broadcasters for his final feature Blue (1993) for which Channel 4 displayed the image and BBC Radio 3 simultaneously played the soundtrack.

Dizzy Bitch, 1993, oil on canvas

That said, despite these successes, only one artistic medium remained a true constant throughout his diverse career: painting. Whilst Jarman’s painterly work is far less often acknowledged than many of his other forms of art, its perpetuation from his childhood to his deathbed provides an unparalleled insight into the creative thought and developments of the artist. Even though his earliest recorded works, such as Studio Door for Robin Noscoe (1960s) foreshadow many of the themes (ecology, language, vivid colour) seen in his later career, the intermediate stylistic diversity of his painting is astonishing. Initially reminiscent of folk art traditions, Jarman’s painting developed towards abstraction in works such as Landscape with Marble Mountain (1967) and adopts a distinctly modernist minimalism with Avebury Series No. 4 (1973) before settling at his best-known, erratic, witty, and introspective compositions exemplified by Dizzy Bitch (1993). Towards the conclusion of Jarman’s career, the act of painting was especially strenuous (an intensity which resonates in his late work’s aesthetic and content) and warranted vigorous phases of rapid painting before longer periods of recovery which his worsening-illness necessitated. Yet Jarman continued to paint, executing seventeen paintings in the year before his death.

Jarman’s final years with AIDS saw his health continue to weaken; he began to lose his eyesight and died in 1994, aged fifty-two. Nevertheless, his manifold artistic legacy encouraged the national AIDS movement, invigorated independent British film, set a precedent for the birth of pop-music-videos, and inspired innumerable succeeding multi-disciplinary artistic figures, from Isaac Julien to Sandy Powell.

Bibliography

Cahill, J. “Meaning in the Margin: Derek Jarman’s Poetic, Vital Resistance”. TLS, Times Literary Supplement 6200 (January 28, 2022): 14-15.

Independent HQ. “The Independent Interview: Amanda Wilkinson”. Independent New York Art Fair. November 2018. https://www.independenthq.com/features/the-independent-interview-amanda-wilkinson.html.

Jarman, D. and Grundmann, R. “History and the Gay Viewfinder: An Interview with Derek Jarman”. Cinéaste 18, No. 4 (1991): 24-27.

Mills, R. “Derek Jarman: Painting it Out”. Art UK Discover. February 27, 2019. https://artuk.org/discover/stories/derek-jarman-painting-it-out.

New York Times. “Derek Jarman, 52, Outspoken British Film Maker”. New York Times, National Edition. February 21, 1994. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/21/obituaries/derek-jarman-52-outspoken-british-film-maker.html.

Silverstone, C. “Editorial: Derek Jarman and ‘the Renaissance’”. Shakespeare Bulletin 32, No. 3 (Fall 2014): 329-336.

Silverstone, C. “Remembering Derek Jarman: Death, Legacy, and Friendship”. Shakespeare Bulletin 32, No. 3 (Fall 2014): 451-470.

Tate. “Derek Jarman. Ataxia – Aids is Fun. 1993”. Tate Galleries. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/jarman-ataxia-aids-is-fun-t06768.