Derek Jarman's Sketchbooks (Deluxe Edition)

(Hardback)

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Description

There are few more complete examples of an artist's record of their own life than the intimately detailed and beautifully produced books that Derek Jarman created throughout his career. Seen together they reveal the story of how he gathered, shaped and made concrete his ideas. Containing poetry, drawings, pressed flowers, photographs, excerpts from scripts and notes, Derek Jarman's sketchbooks are part autobiography and part social history, bursting with the energy and creativity of this groundbreaking artist. This publication collates the best of Jarman's sketchbooks to reveal the detailed planning and emotional engagement behind each of his films in more depth than ever before.

Contributions from people closely tied to Jarman's work (including actress Tilda Swinton, musician Toyah Willcox, artist Andrew Logan, Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, and Jarman's partner Keith Collins) bring to life the filmmaker's social circle and the cultural climate of Britain in the 1970s and 80s. Excerpts from early scripts, sketches and notes in particular ensure this is destined to be an essential work.

Reviews

Derek Jarman's Sketchbooks has poetry, pressed flowers, paintings, photos and script fragments from the late . . . cinema pioneer.
Jarman . . . filled an impressive number of sketchbooks with exquisite calligraphy, drawings, clippings of scenes and costumes, photographs of his gardens and detailed notations for dialogue and editing, many faithfully reproduced here. "
[An] exquisitely curated book. . . .Voluptuous works of art in themselves, these sketchbooks, taken from handmade books the filmmaker gave to the British Film Institute before his death in 1994, blend the written and the visual, revealing the inner workings of the creative process and Jarman s evolution as a filmmaker, artist, and gardener. "
Derek Jarman s Sketchbooks has poetry, pressed flowers, paintings, photos and script fragments from the late . . . cinema pioneer. "
Beautifully put together. . . . Gorgeously realized, the volume demonstrates that Jarman was indeed a visual artist, calligrapher, and poet. . . . Recommended. "

Author Bio

Stephen Farthing is a painter and the Rootstein Hopkins Research Professor of Drawing at the University of the Arts, London.

Ed Webb-Ingall is a film producer who holds a research position at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London.