A Meditation on Color and the Body in Derek Jarman's Chroma and Maggie Nelson's Bluets

Abstract

Derek Jarman's Chroma and Maggie Nelson's Bluets are interdisciplinary autobiographical texts that explore the limits of articulacy and create new queer and feminist genealogies of meaning. This paper argues that these experimental projects communicate embodied experiences, including the effects of loss and AIDS-related illnesses, by interrogating our understandings of perception and color.

Acknowledgment

With thanks to Ingrid Hotz-Davies (Universität Tübingen) for her encouragement and support for this project.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For a detailed discussion of Section 28, see A. Smith (183–239). For Jarman's response to the legislation, see Brophy (61).

2. The color blue has been used by various prominent artists, filmmakers, and musicians. Notably, Pablo Picasso's blue period, during which he painted using predominantly blue and green tones, commenced following the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas and provides a record of his subsequent depression. The blues is a genre of music that often incorporates narratives of personal misfortune and structural racism. Miles Davis's album Kind of Blue is the most famous example of modal jazz. The French film La Vie d'Adèle (dir. Abdellatif Kechiche) was translated for its North American release as Blue Is the Warmest Color. Blue in this case refers to protagonist Adèle's lover Emma's blue hair, which symbolizes desire, first love, and loss.

3. For information about the development of “Bliss,” including an early related live performance with Derek Jarman and Tilda Swinton at the Lumière, St. Martins Lane, see Peake (362, 473, 475, 477–78).

4. The Scrovegni Chapel's fresco cycle, recounting the Christian salvation story, covers the walls and ceiling. It is remarkable in part for its use of color: Giotto used a deep ultramarine to cover the ceiling and as the background to the frescoes on each of the walls, which saturates the onlooker's field of vision. “Such a blue takes hold of the viewer at the extreme limit of visual perception,” Kristeva comments (224).

5. Contributors include John Balance and Peter Christopherson from cult queer experimental group Coil, a capella gothic rock band Miranda Sex Garden, and sound architect Brian Eno. For an analysis of the particular resonances of sound in Jarman's audiovisual project, see Khalip.

6. The artist Georgia O'Keeffe also turned to the color blue in her late works. In 1972, she lost much of her eyesight from macular degeneration. After this point, she produced a series of abstract watercolors in a deep blue. Following her encroaching blindness, she shares with Jarman an instinctual engagement with pure color: “The fathomless blue of Bliss” (Chroma 115).