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Tuesday, March 13, 3:30pm
JC3, Las Moras 47
$150 pesos, $130 pesos
Jean Cocteau - art talk
THE ELUSIVE DANDY OF MODERN ART
by Béa Aaronson
"The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood"
(Jean Cocteau from Le Rappel à l'Ordre 1926)
French movie director and scenarist, novelist, playwright, artist, set designer, actor, Jean Cocteau is probably the most multi-talented artist of the 20th Century.
But he was most and foremost a POET. It is poetry that suffuses all of his esthetic creative activities.
POETRY was the basis of all his art, a religion without hope.
He began writing at 10 and was already published at 16.
As W.H.Auden so rightly said:
“To enclose the collected works of Cocteau one would need not a bookshelf, but a warehouse!”
Poetry does not live only in words, it breathes in music, in silence, in lines, colors, images.
Each image brings forth a moment of identity.
The IMAGE is at the core of our plural identity.
That is why it is so difficult to grasp Jean Cocteau’s artistic life.
Some critics called him “a slippery character.”
This is so unfair.
Cocteau is a pluri-disciplinary creator.
I much prefer French Culture Minister Mitterrand’s description:
Cocteau “l’insaisissable,” the elusive Cocteau, which seems to me the mot juste.
His work reflects the influence of surrealism, psychoanalysis, cubism, and Catholic Religion, all bathing in a creative waft of opium!
Always on the avant-garde, promoting new styles and fashions, Cocteau contributed a lot to the shaping
of the 20th Century zeitgeist.
Born in 1885 into a wealthy, politically prominent family.
Yes, he lived the life of a dandy, a jet society elegant butterfly.
His numerous friends included Coco Chanel, Edith Piaf
(with whom he shared the day of his funeral in 1963), Maria Félix, Marlene Dietrich, Erik Satie, Marcel Proust, Serge Diaghilev, and Pablo Picasso, to name a few.
Incidentally, Cocteau fell under the spell of Picasso who was not very kind to him.
The egocentric Spaniard used to say that "Cocteau was the tail of his comet!”
WHEN:
TUESDAY MARCH 13th
3.30pm
WHERE:
THE JC3
CALLE DE LAS MORAS 47
(corner of Cinco de Mayo)
150 pesos per person
130 pesos for members
RESERVATIONS:
bea_aaronson@hotmail.com
Please,
if you could arrive earlier, EARLIER
to facilitate the seating,
so I may begin on time,
that would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you. Béa
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