Chroma: A Book of Color - Hardcover

Jarman, Derek

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879515740 ISBN 13: 9780879515744

Publisher: Overlook Pr, 1995

Synopsis

Chroma is a meditation on the color spectrum by the celebrated late artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. From the explosions of image and color in In The Shadow of the Sun, The Last of England, The Garden and Wittgenstein, to the somber blacks of his collages and tar paintings, Jarman has consistently used color in unprecedented ways, making his ideas on the subject of interest to filmmakers, film audiences, artists and students alike. Blue, his most personal and innovative film, consists of a compelling soundtrack accompanied by a monochrome blue image and is, among other things, a comment on Jarman's diminishing eyesight due to AIDS.
In his signature style, a lyrical combination of classical theory, anecdote, and poetry, Jarman takes the reader through the spectrum, introducing each color as an embodiment of an emotion, evoking memories or dreams. He explains the use of color in Medieval painting through the Renaissance to the modernists and draws on the great color theorists from Pliny to Leonardo. He writes too about the meanings of color in literature, science, philosophy, psychology, religion and alchemy. Read either as a work on color, or a distillation of Jarman's artistic vision, Chroma presents an exciting perspective on the subject.

About this title

Review

"Chroma is more than an Aids autobiography...it is a paean to colour...Shot through with sass and moving testimony...this complexly written, yet stylish and readable book locates most powerfully the sublimal brilliance of one artist and the processes that inform, and are celebrated through, his work" (Gay Times)

"Chroma sparks off pieces of Jarman's poetry and prose against fragments that span Ovid, Alberti, Goethe and Wittgenstein...to form a highly personal reflection on colour, a keleidoscopic experience that throws out different facets like a prism in the light" (New Statesman)

"Jarman reminds us how much there is to be smelled, observed and listened to in the world if we do not walk past it" (Guardian)

"The context of the writing of this book inevitably turns it from an amusing bricollage to a gesture of extraordinary generosity, a tribute to the continuing need to create and communicate on the very edge of darkness" (Financial Times)

Book Description

Drawing on a long, rich and varied artistic career, the legendary Derek Jarman explores colour from medieval to modern art with the distinctive combination of passion, insight and style that characterizes his work.

Edition details

• Publisher: Overlook Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0879515740
• ISBN 13: 9780879515744
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English