Angelic Conversations

Derek Jarman (1942 - 1994)

Oil on canvas

May 1982

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© The Estate of Derek Jarman Courtesy Wilkinson Gallery, London

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Downing Street
    Angelic Conversations presents a grid filled with frenzied lines against a blue background of wave-like forms, with three circular shapes running along the top. The line ‘Angelic conversations’ features in handwriting at the bottom. Although best-known as a filmmaker, Derek Jarman painted throughout his life. His painterly practice accompanied his work in film, and in 1985, Jarman released the movie The Angelic Conversation. This follows a young man’s journey into longing for another man, and combines stop-motion images with ethereal music, images of the land and sea and an unseen narrator (Judi Dench) reciting fourteen of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Associating a major British literary icon with an evocative expression of male desire, Jarman struck a provocative political note in 1980s Britain, during a period of homophobic repression and the fight for equal rights.
  • About the artist
    Derek Jarman was born in Northwood, Middlesex. He received a BA from Kings College, London, before going on to the Slade School of FIne Art to study painting and stage design and graduating in 1967. Jarman worked in stage design before moving on to production design for film. While he is also known as a costume designer, painter, gardener, writer and a pioneer of the pop music video, he is most widely remembered as an avant garde filmmaker. He made experimental short films in the early 1970s, and his first arthouse feature film, Sebastiane released in 1976, was path-breaking in its depictions of homosexual desire. Jarman’s films were acclaimed for their challenging use of aesthetic forms, for their subversion of what was considered high art, and their use of images from popular culture. But they also engaged head on with social issues and, in particular, threw light onto many obscured queer narratives which included biopics on key figures from the Renaissance painter Carravagio to the twentieth century philosopher Wittgenstien. Outspoken about his own homosexuality, Jarman was a public activist for gay rights. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986 and while his earlier paintings often considered experiences associated with being in nature or landscape, many of his paintings of the 1980s are informed by his activism and his illness. A number of these feature the word ‘queer’ – which Manchester City Art Gallery used to title an exhibition of his work in 1993 – a word which, as the academic Robert Mills points out, he was instrumental in reclaiming for the queer community. An iconic filmmaker and artist, there have been numerous exhibitions of his work at major museums, biennials and galleries in the UK and overseas. His acclaimed film Blue, made while he was going blind due to AIDS-related complications, premiered at the Venice Biennale, in 1993, not long before he died.
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    Materials & Techniques
    canvas, oil, oil painting
  • Details
    Artist
    Derek Jarman (1942 - 1994)
    Title
    Angelic Conversations
    Date
    May 1982
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    height: 71 cm, width: 51 cm, depth: 2 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Wilkinson Gallery, September 2016
    Inscription
    verso: Derek Jarman / May 82 / Angelic Conversations / for Phil / for his 21st / with Love / Derek
    Provenance
    Wilkinson Gallery; purchased September 2016
    GAC number
    18699