- Artist
- Derek Jarman 1942–1994
- Medium
- Oil paint, glass, plastic, brass bullet casings, resin, steel nails and string on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 310 × 270 × 130 mm
frame: 416 × 373 × 192 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased with funds provided by the Nicholas Themans Trust 2022
- Reference
- T15880
Summary
During 1988 Jarman made a number of assemblages using plastic toys and kitsch nicknacks – recasting toy superheroes within his anti-Thatcher message. The Clause makes direct reference to the enactment in May 1988 of Clause 28 of the Local Government Act of 1986 which stated that a local authority ‘shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality … [or] promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.’ Jarman was not only among the first public figures to come out as HIV+ but also became a leading campaigner for gay rights, and against Clause 28 in particular; The Clause effectively depicts the crucifixion of the homosexual community by the British state.
The black background and smashed glass in The Clause relate to Jarman’s earlier series of ‘black paintings’, in which he combined heavy black paint with highlights of gold leaf (see Irresistible Grace 1982 [Tate T15935]). In 1981 Jarman had returned to painting after a period working in theatre design and experimental film. He followed these with a series of assemblages in which found objects were added to black backgrounds that were covered with a pane of smashed glass on which words were etched (see Dead Man’s Eyes 1987 [Tate T15936] and Prospect – Archaeology of Soul 1987 [Tate T15879]). These works marked not only an explicitly verbal turn within Jarman’s painting but also paralleled an essential aspect of his imagistic, non-linear approach to filmmaking.
The critic and historian Simon Watney noted that Jarman’s assemblages through the second half of the 1980s ‘traced a cultural catastrophe in Modern Britain of which most people seem completely unaware’ (cited in Peake, 1999, p.408). It seems fitting that these paintings should come through a meditation on black monochrome symbolising in part the fusion of masculine and feminine, providing a subversive ground from which the certainties of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘heterosoc’ Britain could be challenged. Where Jarman’s first black paintings of the early 1980s (such as the aforementioned Irresistible Grace) were built up from a ground of gold paint or gold leaf – the paint layer being scratched back often to reveal gold as light (and also an alchemical process of revealing gold through the base black paint) – the later assemblages bring light to bear through the smashed glass embedded in the paint. For Jarman black ‘registers as infinity on film with no form or boundary, a black without end’ and was the embodiment of alchemical colour binding the universe together: ‘The base material was the Prima Materia, a chaos like the dark waters of the deep. Melanosis and nigredo.’ (Derek Jarman, Chroma, New York 1995, pp.137 and 76.) Jarman explained to the artist Michael Petry that he used black because ‘things shine out of the darkness and so the very nature of black means that you actually see things better’ (cited by Michael Petry, in Arts Review, 27 January 1989).
Further reading
Peter Wollen (ed.), Derek Jarman: A Portrait, London 1996.
Tony Peake, Derek Jarman, London 1999.
Derek Jarman Protest!, exhibition catalogue, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2020.
Andrew Wilson
November 2020
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