“Jimson lives in a ramshackle houseboat on the Thames river, where he reminisces about the days when the state collected his paintings, hides from the police (who pursue him for his minor infractions and debts) and schemes about how to extract money from various wealthy patrons. That is, his struggles are conceptual, material and financial and always involve a race against time and an acknowledgement of his own limitations even in light of his successes. After a series of roguish scrapes, he finally receives a retrospective at Tate Britain: a triumph that does little to alleviate his destitution. But the film’s dénouement comes when Jimson paints a “monument to England”: a giant mural representing “The last Judgment” on the side of a bombed-out church aided by a cadre of voluntary art student assistants who he keeps remunerated in cups of coffee. The film ends when Jimson — threatened by council developers looking to capitalize on the land — voluntarily bulldozes his mural in advance of the city bureaucrats and sails off down the Thames in search of a new horizon: perhaps another, larger wall (or a further expansion of painting as such).”

CONTRIBUTORS
Carol Armstrong, Warren Carter, Helmut Draxler, Kerstin Stakemeier, Elisabeth Lebovici, Esther Leslie, Avigail Moss, Ulrike Müller, Dierk Schmidt, and Amy Sillman.