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Feature [published August 1996]
Derek Jarman: Preserving A Harlequin
Nick Clapson reflects on the work of England’s quintessential Renaissance man
By the time you read this, Derek Jarman: A Retrospective
will have closed at the Barbican Centre. However,
the Barbican Centre’s comprehensive catalogue of the
exhibition, which has been published by Thames And
Hudson, gives a chance to re-evaluate the impact and
splendour of Derek Jarman’s work. Though largely famous
for his film-work, Jarman was also a prestigious
artist and writer, with his artistic skills even pouring
over into other diverse art-forms such as scenery design
and gardening (yes, gardening).
With a man whose output was so divergent, whose
character so like quicksilver, it is hard to pin him down.
And this is the beauty of Jarman. He was indefinable
and unique, a British maverick comparable in importance
to artists such as William Blake, and as such,
should not allowed to drift to the side-lines of history,
or to be pigeon-holed solely as a queer film-maker.
I discovered Derek Jarman myself through his
journals, published as Modern Nature (1991), and At
Your Own Risk (1992). Written as direct result of his
knowledge that he was HIV+ these books offer the
reader a startling honesty. Nothing is hidden from us,
BUY Derek Jarman books online from and
and as such we enter into his world, and his everyday
life, more as a friend than an observer – no brave face
is put on for us, no politeness offered. Instead, Derek
gives us truth and compassion, and at times pure, honest,
anger. He leaps between the meditative contemplation
of his garden and haranguing the British film
industry for its complacency, between describing the
omnipresence of the nuclear reactor behind his home
at Dungeness and the evils of what he called “hetrosoc”.
The result is a potent, valuable set of books
pulsing with pure emotion.
This truth and honesty is also a quality found in
Jarman’s films; he eschewed the expense and contrivance
of big-budget films for the simplicity of Super8
stock. Even Jarman’s most expensive films were made
at a fraction of the cost of the cheapest Hollywood
film. His work was radically different, especially
from the usual British attempts at generating some
form of quirky pseudo-Hollywood style. However,
this outsider position quite suited Jarman, and as he
said, “I am the most fortunate film director of my generation:
I’ve only ever done what I wanted”. People
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