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A poetic, passionate and intensely personal exploration of colour written during the final year of Derek Jarman's life -- with a new introduction by Ali Smith.

In Chroma, his most poetic and lyrical book, Derek Jarman explores the uses of colour. Shifting across the spectrum and from the medieval to the modern, he draws on the work of great colour theorists from Pliny to Leonardo. Interwoven with these musings are evocative memories from Jarman's childhood and illustrious career, along with reflections on his deteriorating health.

Written a year before Jarman's death, and as his eyesight was failing, this is an intensely personal work; a paean from an artist seeking to memorialise the extraordinary power of colour even while it receded from his own life. 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 * 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 * Full of anger, wit, emotion, and knowledge, this collection informs and astounds...Immensely powerful * Kirkus * 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 *

Chroma: A Book of Colour - June '93