Interviewer: Do you see a future?

Derek Jarman: No.

For one who does not conceive of a future, and perhaps cannot, Jarman keeps remarkably busy. Within the last year he has directed his sixth full-length feature film, several rock videos, and one of the ten sections of the new film Aria (each of which is by a different director); had a book published; and mounted this show of 132 paintings from 1986 and ’87. His film The Last of England presents a broken vision of modern civilization, an invocation of a collapsing present by a would-be Blake or Swift. There are bits of family footage (shot by the

The interesting thing about Avis Newman’s recent large works on canvas is the shift from drawing to painting. In making that move, she calls into question the idea of ’80s painting as a predominantly male, post-Conceptual return to heroic, expressive figuration exemplified by such artists as Julian Schnabel and David Salle. Newman’s work draws its look from Paleolithic cave paintings, using marks of varying thickness and texture to suggest the human form. Her canvases are large and unstretched, covering much of the gallery’s walls in a way that gives the show something of the air of an installation,