Alfred Russell : Jean Cocteau or the Blood of the Poet, 1983.

Jean Cocteau or the Blood of the Poet

by Alfred Russell Easter Sunday 1983

The show of drawings, pastels, ceramics, and jewelry by Jean Cocteau opening at the Jack Gallery in New York April 5 brings back onto the New York scene this enigmatic personality at a propitious moment when our culture needs to be awakened, nudged out of its lethargy and bureaucratic conceit.

Jean Cocteau never stood still from the moment he was born at Maison-Laffitte in 1889 until he died at Milly-la-Forêt in 1963. The catalogue of his activities and accomplishments is astounding: as poet, artist, playwright, choreographer, cartoonist, book illustrator, film maker, essayist, satirist, to name a few. From the moment he arrived in Paris in 1909 he was welcomed as one of their own by the elite creative personalities of those years: Picasso, Apollinaire, Modigliani, Stravinsky, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, etc.

At this time he had made no decision between art and poetry for his life work. It was not until his "Potomak" in 1916 that he discovered his direction for the future. "Potomak" was a composite of texts, prose poems, and 63 drawings about the strange adventures of a peaceful married couple who were finally devoured by cannibals. About this work he said he had discovered his true originality was that of a marriage between the conscious and the unconscious.

It was Picasso's influence that was most decisive in his drawing style and method—especially the method, for from that point onward Cocteau's newfound style would undergo its own sea of changes.

He had always drawn on his own, beginning in childhood with his emulation of the witty cartoonist Sem. Then there was Daumier, Goya, and the satirist Cappiello. His mother and father were avid theater-goers and the child Cocteau caught from them what he called "le mal rouge et or." This led him eventually to Sara Bernhardt, Mistinguett, and finally to Nijinsky and the ballet.

Along with these influences, he underwent that of Erik Satie and the short-lived literary genius Raymond Radiguet (1903-1923), author of "Le Diable au Corps." Cocteau was inspired by them to seek purification and clarity in his style, and with them reacted against the excesses and shortcomings of Dada and the avant-garde. His trip to Rome in 1917 with Picasso and the Diaghilev Ballet troupe gave him firsthand contact with classical art. On returning to Paris, he dropped the geometrical-cubist influence to become the poet and draughtsman of a new classicism. Picasso too began his "Classical Period" after this trip. Cocteau, however, always felt free to revive certain cubist metaphors when needed. A propos this classicism Cocteau stated that he chose Raphael over Michelangelo, "pour sa grace triste de poésie." Then wittily he added that he would rather see a real pipe or cube by Leger than a false angel by some hack artist.

During his lifetime he made many statements about his creative process—both in poetry and drawing. As for training, he said the best way to master a subject was to jump into deep water and then learn to swim to the nearest shore before you drowned: follow "une ligne menacée de mort sur tous les points de son parcourse."

Cocteau said that he always had two methods of drawing and preparing for a series of drawings on a particular subject. One was to make a mass of knots of lines in the center of a piece of paper. This center could be considered the "eye" which looks outward. The other method was to leave the center blank and make notes and observations for the compositions on the margins of the sheet. These seemingly divergent methods simply masked "une identité secrète." Then of course, he would develop the final image on a third sheet.

In a conversation in 1927 with the writer Andre Fraigneau, Cocteau said that he believed in economy of means in drawing, and quickly compared his method to that of Queen Dido who used a bull's hide to claim the land area of the future city of Carthage simply by cutting the hide into thin strips. The Cocteau wit couldn't rest there, and he added "Je suis a la fois Dido et le bœuf." Of course, he knew all about "bull" for he had gained world recognition for his 1920 play "Le Boeuf sur le Toit" with music by Darius Milhaud.

I would classify Cocteau's method of drawing as inductive. He used his intelligence and common sense to depict forms in space akin to the method of Leonardo's notebooks, to Luca Cambiaso's "solutions," and to those direct depictions of the fantastic in such artists as Bosch, Altdorfer, and Goya in Los Caprichos.

In a preface to his 1939 drawing series "La Quete du Graal" he describes how he tackles a given subject, here the search for the Holy Grail. At first he said that he felt little interest in the project. Then looking into it, his enthusiasm gradually surged and reached that state of "L'amour maniaque par laquelle un poète accompagne ses entreprises." At this point he must then slow down enough to plan his moves, to make an approximate verification of the subject. "Car rien n'exige plus de réalisme que l'emploi du merveilleu." Otherwise the marvelous will simply become picturesque and will not have the power to move us.

In his meditations on the subject of the Grail, Cocteau "chanced" upon the word inouïe and its use as "cette fleur inouïe"—that "unheard of, strange, wonderful flower." The meaning of inouïe is enigmatic, and exact translation seems to be impossible. This all finally leads to the key piece for the series, his drawing of a kneeling woman with her head buried in her arms. At her side is an unrolled scroll with the words "Les Malefices du Graal"—the Sorcery of the Holy Grail—written on it. Then follows the series of over fifty superb classical drawings. The word "Inouïe" became the key word in Cocteau's work; it became the Cocteau "Eye." The word, any word, was his violin, in my opinion, and on it he played like a Paganini. Poems, drawings, films, jokes, puns streamed out as his bow flitted over the strings, improvisations cascading giddily upon improvisations.

Cocteau had no need to be a great artist or poet; he just had to be Jean Cocteau and in his way he beat them all at their own game.

His 1926 drawing-construction "Tete au Punaises" was a beautiful visual pun and was a wry question to you and me—Was this head, any head, your head, made of thumbtacks or was it made of bed bugs? He never had to put the dots on the eyes. He never got caught with his puns down as do so many half wits!

His wit was malicious, casual, mocking—but never cruel. It masked his profound tragic sense, and the void of his opium years. He made anti-war drawings in 1914 and 1941. During a trip to New York he was so deeply moved by the plight of a Black youth who was being used as a guinea pig for experiments in a hospital that he drew a portrait of the youth after he returned to St. Jean Cap-Ferrat.

Today we must be moved by the series of drawings in the present exhibition that he did of himself after facial surgery. Then there were the tragic drawings for Crucifiction, 1943, and the Death of Statues, 1946.

In the 1950's Cocteau undertook one of his largest paintings, in collaboration with his friend, the painter Morretti, entitled "L'Âge du Verseau," The Age of Aquarius. For those who believed that since 1950 we had entered a new Golden Age, this painting showed humanity drowned in a flood of tears amidst a drowning Medusa's head. But even here his wit came to play a painting game, a pun game with water, paint, pitchers, floods, constellations pouring, tilting, everything topsy-turvy.

In conclusion, let me say there is no conclusion. Let us just leap from time to time into the secret world of this modern Orpheus.