By Angels Driven [antikvár]

The title of this collectíon was suggested by Baudelaire's pocm, Love*s Wine- (alsó known as "The Lovers' Wine', ín which the lovers arc "Liké a pair of angels driven/by somé implacable fever/up ínto morning's blue crystal".1 These words seem appropriate to Derek Jarman's films for a number of reasons. Angels appear commonly in his films - the character in Jubilee (1978); the boy in Caravaggio (1986); the men and women who ciide his bed on the beach in The Garden (1990); perhaps the spirits of The Tempest (1979) and The Angelic Conversatioti (1985). The editors of Afierimage magaziné chose to üde their special issue on Jarman published in 1985 "Of Angels and Apoealypsc", and the same title served for the exhibition of his films thai toured the United States in 1986 and 1987. Jarman's own "implacable fever", the HIV vírus, deeply influenced the last six years of his life, but just as implacable was his drive to continue producing paintíngs, books and films at an astonishíng rate. These projects culminated in the large, expressionistic canvases exhibited in two major shows in Manchester, Queer (1992) and Evil Queen (1994); ín the book, Chrotna (1994), his exploration of colours as experienced by painters and peoples through the ages; and, of course, in Blue (1993), perhaps his most successful, humán and intimate film, as well as his most formally radical and avant-garde. Jarman's cinema was always intensely personal. He made his films on shoestring budgets, as anisanal rather than industhal projects, returning often to Super 8 footage. He frcquently appears himself and always worked with friends, sometímes incorporating ínto the film whichever of them might chance by. His own queer identity and the political concems to which this led hím frame most of his projects.2 He regarded the books that accompany many of his films as further asscrtions of the personal, wríting in At Your Own Risb that "lmjy obsession with biography is to find...'1's. The subtext of my films have Isicl been the books, pulting myself back ínto the picture . Although Jarman was quickly recognised as a powerful and distinctive filmmakcr, acclaim came late ín a career characterised by controversy. He struggled throughout his artistic life to make the films he wished to make, and, although he usually succeeded eventually.