Derek Jarman, artist, writer, designer, gardener and activist, who died thirty years ago, is celebrated in an exhibition of his ‘dark paintings’ in London and in the publication of a treatment for an unfinished film called The Assassination of Pier Paolo Pasolini in the Garden of Earthly Delights, which Jarman wrote in 1984 as he was struggling to get his film Caravaggio made.
Best known to the general public for his peaceful garden in the shadow of the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station, now saved for the nation, his main oeuvre in contrast was often ‘angry, dark and disturbing.’
His black paintings came out of a period when he had been diagnosed with HIV and in the midst of the Thatcher backlash against homosexuality in the late 1980s. He died of complications from AIDs in 1994.
Jarman was born 31 January 1942 7.30am Northwood, England, had a 1st house Aquarius Sun (and Venus) in an entertaining trine to a 5th house Jupiter; and more pointedly opposition Pluto and square Mars in Taurus – ultra-determined, angry, stubborn and enduring. His Cancer Moon conjunct Pluto on one side and sextile Uranus and Saturn in Taurus in his 4th added to his super-determined temperament. Though a 7th house Moon would yearn for the security of a close partner. Three planets in Taurus, two in his 4th, would incline him towards nature in his home life, hence the garden. His 8th/9th house Neptune was in a creative, inspired trine to Uranus.
A critic wrote: “There’s something galvanising about Jarman’s resourcefulness as well as his rage, his protean creativity, and his determination to live his life and make his work regardless of the forces of repression ranged against it. “He kept flying through the flak. He kept going forward and he was extremely unapologetic about who he was and what he liked to do. Shadowing his work is a great deal of distress and trauma, but you were very seldom aware of it in his company because he was immensely warm, positive and joyful.”
Pier Paolo Pasolini, 5 March 1922 6.30am Bologna, Italy was poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright, considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history. Openly gay, he became an avowed Marxist after the end of World War II, voicing harsh criticism of Italian petty bourgeoisie and what he saw as the Americanization, cultural degeneration, and greed-driven consumerism taking over Italian culture. ‘As a filmmaker, Pasolini often juxtaposed socio-political polemics with an extremely graphic and critical examination of taboo sexual matters.’ He was murdered aged 53 in 1975, with blame initially falling on a 17-year-old rent boy but the more likely culprit would be a far-right terrorist group, working with the tacit approval of the secret services.
Pasolini was born 5 March 1922 6.30am Bologna, Italy, with a father who was a gambler and pro-fascist. He had rebellious, provocative Uranus Sun and Venus in Pisces in his 1st house in a charismatic and determined trine to Pluto in his entertaining and creative 5th house. His Neptune sextile Jupiter was inconjunct his Sun and Venus for a personality that was both charming and also unsure. His lively Mars in Sagittarius in his communicative, opinionated 9th house was in a showbizzy trine to Neptune and sextile Saturn as well as inconjunct Pluto.
His Taurus Moon was square Mercury but not well integrated into his chart.
My slight impression and it is hardly a statistical survey is that an afflicted Mars and poorly aspected Moon are a theme in this and the Edmund White/Genet charts as well.
A wonderful, eccentric individual, almost like someone from another age entirely. I treasure my copy of Derek Jarman’s Garden, which is all about how he created his unique garden at Prospect Cottage, in the only quasi-desert in England at Dungeness. Somehow that home-loving Cancer Moon with Pluto, Uranus and Saturn symbolises the salty winds, shingle (Saturn), and nuclear power station (Pluto) that make up the landscape there. Uranus might be symbolised by all the pylons visible from the cottage.
A love poem – The Sun Rising – by John Donne is carved on the black wooden south wall of Prospect Cottage. I thought it was interesting, partly because Jarman’s natal Aquarian Sun opposes the Sun’s ‘home’ in Leo. Here’s the first verse:
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thank you, Jane for the info on the Donne poem. I remember Jarman’s Garden book. We used to sell it on the gallery I worked at. It really was an inspiration for budding and seasoned gardeners alike with Derek Jarman’s unique aesthetic sense and use of sculpural natural forms within a bleak landscape. A beautiful man. Early in the 70s, he was the set designer for (one of my favourite banned films) Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’, which if you’ve never seen has one of the most stunning, modernist sets, really unforgettable.
Thanks VF. It is a delightful book, with all his thoughts and plans for the garden so beautifully expressed. I think his chart is quite literal here, with those Taurean planets gathering around the IC, the root of his chart. He loved to garden from childhood onwards, so returned to his own roots by making a garden in such an uncanny, liminal place.
I remember seeing ‘Jubilee’ and ‘The Tempest’ as a teenager. He was hugely influential in art cinema during that period and throughout the 80s. Yes, Section 28 was a spiteful move on the part of the Thatcher government and controversial, backward, pernicious piece of legislation. I see both directors have Mars in aspect to Chiron.
Thank you for posting on Derek Jarman, I am a huge fan of his work.
Thank you for such an intelligent look at these two remarkable men.