Des Hegarty - History of Art

January 8th 2002

In 1992 Derek Jarman completed his last film/video entitled ‘Blue’. When it was first shown at the Venice Biennale Film Festival it received a standing ovation and was described in the programme notes as, “…a bold, moving, controversial statement of life and death”. Blue was first screened in the UK on Channel 4 with a simultaneous broadcast of the sound track on BBC Radio 3, an unusual collaboration, and also, virtually unique for independent television, there were no commercial breaks. It is the last in a trilogy of film works comprising, ‘The Last of England’ and ‘The Garden’. He also wrote a book called ‘The Last of England’ as a series of diary notes and discussions on the project. Derek Jarman died in 1994 in London from an Aids related condition.

Much of Jarman’s work is autobiographical as is ‘Blue’. The film/video was produced by Jarman as he was living through the late stages of HIV/AIDS. It is a montage, a single intense all pervading image, (an electronically produced blue normally used in edit suites as a key to drop in other images) and of an eclectic mix of poetry, prose, music and sound effects with the voices of actors and friends. The sound track and the music gradually divulge Jarman’s experience with AIDS, alternating the description of the progress of the virus and the treatment with verbal metaphysical images on life and art. The track begins with sounds reminiscent of clocks chiming gently in a pre-television household, playing a yet to be composed tune. They set the scene as it were and we gradually become aware of Jarman’s paradox of his early life in middle England with all its supposed warmth and protection, the womb-like security of childhood, time standing still whilst the clocks tick and then carry on ticking whilst time is running out. Time runs out for one person but time itself never runs out. The continuum is set in place.

The voices provide a montage of audio images: ‘blue bottle; blue heat haze; blue heart; blue delphinium day (one of my favourites); universal blue, an open door to the soul; cobalt rings and indigo slaves’. All these metaphorical ideas are set against a screen consisting of saturated blue, a chroma-key or matte colour used for special effects filming. (The principal has been used since the early days of photography and film makers carried on the practice with varying degrees of success until the advent of the computer motion controlled cameras in the mid-seventies. Even then such films as superman and Star wars had to rely on dark backgrounds to hide the ‘cut marks’.) For Jarman the irony must have been profound. For the length of the piece, some 72 minutes, he had at his fingertips, the ability to drop into the screen any image or special visual effect he wishes but, for a person going slowly blind, what is the point?

These iconic ideals of the colour are verbally inter-cut with Jarman describing his super reality of his regular visits to the hospital and his consultant’s attempts to, “…first identify the problems and then reduce the rate of progress ”. “…my retina is destroyed, …I have to come to terms with sightlessness”
Then back to the imagination. “…Blue is the universal love in which man bathes, it is the terrestrial paradise.”
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Jarman did not consider himself a film-maker, rather an artist painter who happened to use film or video for one project or another. .AL Rees describes the man as, “Breeding new cinematic cross-breeds between Super 8, 16mm and digital video editing.”
He compares himself to Italian director Pier Paulo Pasolini saying “…all Italian film-makers look through painters eyes.”
And his own techniques bare little resemblance to normal film production. He was known to project and re-film or re-video work in order to degrade or colour the image. Nowadays this would be done electronically but his was a real hands-on affair. He often did this with little regard for the aesthetic of retaining a pristine image. Montage seems to be his by-word. Montages of faces, places and whole scenes laid one over the other but all within the movie frame.

His previous work ‘The Garden’, uses the chroma key matte technique in a number of scenes but to particular effect when Jarman shows us a series of last suppers scenarios, all of which are parodies on Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco. As for instance when we see a group of women running their fingers around the edge of their wine glasses all filled to different levels and all producing a musical note. Interestingly, the matte shot background is not at all subtle but at the same time it sits well with the foreground image. In the early seventies John Duncane, one of the key figures in the London Film Makers Co-op showed Jarman the method of superimposition. It was a lesson well learnt and took to his heart. Most directors using this technique try to disguise the effect but Jarman relishes the lack of sophistication. It is presented as a montage, a style that Jarman is very familiar with through his painting. In his book ‘The last of England’ he is quoted as saying,
“… I am interested in work that has no obvious function or should I say compunction.”
Similarly, the musical notes of the wine glasses are dubbed in a very obvious way but again seem to blend in with the overall scheme of the piece.

Despite the nature of ‘Blue’, a static unchanging colour ground, it is a moving and impressive reflection on life and death combining both humour and pathos. His sight was failing and whilst it is a contemplative piece of his death to come, as he says in the sound track it is about his experience of “living with aids” The ironic fact that he is dying from the disease is left unsaid. Despite all the possibilities for self-pity, the work is remarkably enlivening. Jarman meditates on the colour blue. It is one of the last things he sees as the doctor tests his vision using flashing lights that leave a blue residual colour. He says “…blue transcends the solid geography of human limits.”

The psycho geography is a key element to the images Jarman conjures up. Jarman talks of “… pearl fishers in Asian seas…” or how “…blue is the universal love in which man bathes, it is terrestrial paradise” and again he says “…I have walked behind the sky”. Surprisingly the constancy of the colour has a mildly soporific effect and it is left to the sound track to change mood and pace. He is also noted as saying “Back in 1960 I got hold of “The Doors of perception’. …The (Aldous) Huxley book should definitely be read by all film students; it contains more useful information than any textbook I’ve read”.
Blue is a recurring theme in his work. He was interested in the French painter Yves Klein and his inspirational work in monochromes. By coincidence (or possibly by design) the electronic saturated blue used as the image is very similar in intensity to Klein Blue, the colour Yves Klein patented for exclusive use in his work. In The Last of England, he describes his secret ambition to find the ‘Blue’ rose, the Holy Grail of gardeners. He talks of his desire to see the blue irises of Giverny, Monet’s garden, and how, having travelled from the UK by hovercraft on a day trip, he and his friend are refused entry by a ‘fascist’ gatekeeper because a private party is about to start within half an hour. They pear over the wall to see stolen glimpses of the empty garden in bloom but have to leave for the return ferry never to return. The sense of loss is tangible. I would even go so far as to say (without sarcasm or irony) that it created a ‘blue’ mood for just long enough before the next experience occurred.

The synaesthetic aspect of the piece is interesting in that the visual sensory stimulation should be set, however the sound track often overrides this with suggestions such as ‘cobalt’ or ‘indigo’ or ‘walking behind the sky and the archaeology of Sound’. Other sensory ideas are triggered at key points, the warmth of a summer beach the fear and smell of a hospital consulting room.
The cross referencing of sensual experience has only recently being investigated as a psychological phenomenon in particular by the University of California San Diego but in ‘Blue’ Jarman approaches the concept twenty years early.

‘Blue’ as a piece of film art challenges the medium in one fundamental way. The idea that the audience will accept a static image when they have expectations of movement is to turn film on its head. Interestingly whilst I watched or rather listened to the progress of the work, I found myself transcending various states. At times I found the sound mesmeric at others I was drawn to the movement created within the blue image by the worn out quality of the VHS video. Moiré patterns appeared and disappeared like spectres on the screen, sometimes synching with the sound track, at other times acting totally independently.

Had Derek Jarman survived with his sight intact to see this low quality of reproduction, I believe he would have approved. I also believe it validates a theory of mine that the sound track of a film is the most important element and in nearly all cases puts the visual aspect into second place, so perhaps, a blue screen on the radio might be fun.

Bibligraphy:
Tony Peake – Derek Jarman: A Biography – Overlook –ISBN 158 567066 9
Art in Theory 1900/1990- C Harrison & P Wood-Blackwell,Oxford – ISBN 0631 1657 4
Derek Jarman – The Last of England – Constable, 1987 - ISBN 0 09468080 9
A L Rees – A History of Experimental Film and Video – BFI 1999 – ISBN 0 85170684 3
Gays and Film – Edited by Richard Dyer – BFI 1977 – ISBN 0 85170 065 9
Art Monthly-video column – edited by Michael O’Bray & Catherine Elwes
Activism, Modernism and the Avant-Garde Hans Richter – MIT Press Cambridge Mass.
ISBN 9 780260 06 1964

Videos:
Derek Jarman – Blue
Derek Jarman – The Garden
Derek Jarman – The Last of England