{"id":317291,"date":"2025-08-04T13:59:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T13:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/317291\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T13:59:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T13:59:18","slug":"derek-jarman-the-black-paintings-a-chronology-part-ii-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/317291\/","title":{"rendered":"Derek Jarman The Black Paintings: A Chronology Part II 1988"},"content":{"rendered":"

Derek Jarman The Black Paintings: A Chronology Part II 1988 \u2013 1991
17th July, 2025 \u2013 20th September, 2025
Amanda Wilkinson Gallery
1st Floor, 47 Farringdon Road
London, EC1M 3JB<\/strong><\/p>\n

Between Dungeness and Soho: Derek Jarman\u2019s Artistic Journey, 1988\u20131991<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back here this the evening I walked along the seashore. The tide was far out on the horizon and the water on the sand reflected the faded rose of the sunset like a mirror; for a brief moment the sun lit up the boats and houses around the bay before suddenly disappearing.<\/p>\n

Derek Jarman<\/strong>
Modern Nature, Wednesday 22 February 1989<\/p>\n

Part II of Derek\u00a0Jarman<\/a> The Black Paintings : A Chronology<\/strong>\u00a0presents works made between 1988 \u2013 1991. During this time Jarman created his garden at Prospect Cottage, wrote his famous diary\u00a0Modern Nature\u00a0and made what is thought to be one of his most significant films\u00a0The Garden, 1990, shot on location in Dungeness.<\/p>\n

The diary entries in\u00a0Modern Nature\u00a0speak of the joy that Jarman found observing the landscape of Dungeness as well as the creative challenge of making a garden around Prospect Cottage. He found both pursuits healing, following his HIV diagnosis, and as markers of the time during which he lost many friends to the virus. Poetic passages about particular plants and the gradual development of the garden are interlaced with notations about his parallel life in London\u2019s Soho with HB and reminiscences about other gardens he had access to a s a child. <\/p>\n

Jarman called\u00a0Modern Nature\u00a0a form of self-archaeology, an \u2018archaeology of the soul.\u2019 The notion of memory is also central to the black paintings from this period, as old photographs are crystalised on their black surfaces. Self-reflection is also present in both references to and the use of mirrors, notably in paintings during 1988, onto which he placed small objects gathered from the beach, often gilded and transformed, alluding to alchemic symbols.<\/p>\n

\"DerekDerek Jarman At the Fifth Quarter of the Globe, 1987
Oil and mixed media on canvas
16 x 16 inches
Amanda Wilkinson Gallery <\/p>\n

The iconography in paintings from this period relates directly to the theme of his film\u00a0The Garden\u00a0\u2013 the depiction of Christ as a persecuted figure analogous to the persecution Jarman and his community felt at the time, especially following the introduction of Clause 28 in 1988 (legislation that banned the \u2018promotion of homosexuality\u2019).The cross appears in several of the paintings, embedded in the paint and surrounded by toy figures of demons, or as a cross made of thorns alongside a thermometer, implying the threat of AIDS.<\/p>\n

In 1989, assisted by the filmmaker David Lewis, Jarman discovered a new painting technique using tar:<\/p>\n

David arrived at lunch with an enormous block of pitch.<\/p>\n

After swimming we built a brick hearth, lit a bonfire, and melted the pitch in an old tin can. For an hour we rushed back and forth to the house for brushes, gloves, barbed wire, crucifixes, prayer books, bullets, a model fighter plane even an old telephone, which we tarred and feathered. The results were instant and extraordinary. The hot tar splashed everywhere and set like shining jet; the half-buried crucifix looked like a Medardo Rosso sculpture.<\/p>\n

See also<\/p>\n

\"After<\/a><\/p>\n

Working with the tar had all the excitement of building sand-and-water pinnacles and spires on the beach as a child.<\/p>\n

Derek Jarman,\u00a0Modern Nature, Tuesday 25 July 1989<\/p>\n

The enthusiasm for this medium resulted in several paintings made with tar over the next two years. The process itself involved the building of a bonfire on the beach, an appealing aspect to Jarman given his interest in the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus who invoked fire as a metaphor for ever-changing life. In one of the tar paintings Jarman quoted words from the philosopher in the form of a street warning sign, a device used in several of the paintings from this period \u2018Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep\u201d. The powerful tar-and-feather scene in\u00a0The Garden\u00a0was also an inspiration for these paintings, many of which feature feathers from an old pillow alongside the other objects embedded in the surface.<\/p>\n

\"DerekDerek Jarman Untitled, 1985 Oil on canvas
45.72 x 41.28 cm
18 x 16 3\/8 inches
Amanda Wilkinson Gallery<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Black Paintings<\/strong>\u00a0in all their multilayered forms provide a monochromatic window into the creative world of Derek Jarman and trace the many themes, ideas and formal strategies that he embarked upon during these years. They precede another great monochrome, the film\u00a0Blue, 1994, a masterpiece and his final work.<\/p>\n

Derek Jarman The Black Paintings: A Chronology Part II 1988 \u2013 1991 opens on the 17th of July, 2025 until the 20th of September, 2025 at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery<\/strong><\/p>\n

Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a92025 Keith Collins Will Trust and Amanda Wilkinson<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Art Plugged is a contemporary platform inspired by a relationship with the broader arts communities. We provide our audience with curated insight into the world of art, from exhibitions to artist interviews and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Derek Jarman The Black Paintings: A Chronology Part II 1988 \u2013 199117th July, 2025 \u2013 20th September, 2025Amanda…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,115391,115392,115393,393,6968,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-317291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-derek-jarman","10":"tag-derek-jarman-the-black-paintings","11":"tag-derek-jarman-the-black-paintings-a-chronology-part-ii-1988-1991","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-exhibition","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114970857565079794","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}