Derek Jarman: A Biography

In 1986, at the height of his career, Derek Jarman was rigorously denounced by right-wing censor Mary Whitehead for promoting homosexuality and violence after his earlier films, Sebastiane (1976) and Jubilee (1977), were shown on the BBC's Channel 4. The attacks were emblematic of the fire the filmmaker drew as a radical artist and sexual provocateur from the beginning of his career in the late 1960s to his death from AIDS in 1994. This intelligent, graceful critical biography traces Jarman's colorful life and art in detail. Born to middle-class parents (his father was in the RAF), Jarman spent his youth abroad and in boarding schools, where he became aware, at a young age, of his gay sexuality and his artistic talents. Early efforts at theater design and conceptual art led to working with Ken Russell on The Devils and then a brilliant and very controversial film career of his own. Peake, who was Jarman's literary agent, deftly weaves together his subject's many artistic facets (Jarman was a director, designer, painter, sculptor and writer) with the intricacies of his public and private lives. Though openly gay, Jarman was on the fringes of the gay movement until his diagnosis with AIDS in 1987, when he began vigorously to protest antigay and AIDS policies in the U.K., both on the streets and in his work. Jarman's dedication to both his films and his controversial politics (he attacked Ian McKellen for accepting a knighthood from an antigay government) makes for lively reading, and reveals as much about the impact of the artist's world upon his work as it does about his effect on that world. (Oct.)