Dancing Ledge: Journals vol. 1

Description

Jarman's first journal - preceding Modern Nature - is his candid coming-of-age memoir about being an art student, making his first films, and coming out in Britain in the 60s and 70s 'What started as a book on the frustration of funding led to the writing of an autobiography at forty... I had so little to do in the daylight hours, I stayed up late unbuttoning Levis in back rooms.' The first in Derek Jarman's autobiographical journals, spanning the 60s and 70s to its publication in 1984. It also contains an introduction from Jarman written in 1991, then famous and publicly living with HIV. In non-linear snippets and including photographs of Jarman's artwork, he describes his sexual awakening in post-war England, his early struggles to create and find recognition for his art, and vivid accounts of his friends, lovers, and inspirations. DANCING LEDGE is Jarman's first steps in telling his life story, and already has the immediacy, colour, and candour that became his trademark style.

Derek Jarman was born in London in 1942. His career spanned decades and genres, from painter, theatre designer, director, film maker, to poet, writer, campaigner and gardener. His features include Sebastiane (1976), Jubilee (1978), Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), Edward II (1991) and Blue (1993). His paintings - for which he was a Turner Prize nominee in 1986 - continue to be exhibited worldwide, and his garden in Dungeness remains a site of pilgrimage to fans and newcomers alike.

Jarman's light illuminates the wilderness as brightly as ever * New Statesman * Jarman [is] the sort of troublemaking visionary who one day may be compared with Blake * Time Out *