Jean COCTEAU (1889-1963)
Jean COCTEAU (1889-1963)
"Guerriers et victime" from
Soixante dessins pour "Les enfants Terribles"
Print, 2000 re-edition from the 1935 publication
Dimensions: Height 21.9 cm, Width 16.7 cm (8.5 x 6.5 in)
Jean Cocteau wrote his seminal 1929 novel Les Enfants Terribles over a feverish seventeen-day delirium during his stay at the Saint-Cloud clinic, where he was undergoing an opium detoxification treatment following the death of his close friend Raymond Radiguet. A few years after the novel's publication, Cocteau conceived an accompanying portfolio featuring around sixty scenes illustrating the narrative, published under the title Soixante dessins pour 'Les enfants terribles'. The execution of these drawings was as rapid and tempestuous as the surreal tale itself, which masterfully depicts the obsessive love between a brother and sister.
In the preface to this edition, Cocteau notes that his drawings are intended for the reader who has not merely read Les Enfants Terribles, but who has been profoundly struck by the narrative—much like the protagonist, Paul, is struck by a snowball thrown by his classmate Dargelos. As Cocteau declares in this same preface, "nothing is more painful than the boundaries of books, than that word 'fin' which expels us, than that cruel abandonment of the characters." Cocteau viewed his novels, plays, films, and drawings alike as variations of poetry, believing that its true essence lay in the transcendence of all artistic borders. It was precisely for this reason that he famously termed his drawings "graphic poetry."
The sixty drawings of celebrated characters and scenes were originally executed in ink on Japan paper, sketched in profile in Cocteau's signature aesthetic style, evocative of stylized fashion mannequins. This particular sketch entitled "Guerriers et victime" illustrates a pivotal passage from the novel in which Paul is attacked by his schoolmates.
The album also modifies the ending: it concludes with three plates magnifying Paul and Élisabeth's ascent "to the heaven of tragedies," closely united and seemingly free at last to love each other exclusively. Yet in the novel, this ascent stems from more confused feelings on Paul's part, whose final thought is not for his sister but for Dargelos. The apotheosis of fraternal love replaces that of homosexual love, which is allusively evoked by a plate positioned just before the final three: "Paul, dying, sees the faces from the snowball fight."
Jean Cocteau was a French artist, poet, playwright, filmmaker, and designer whose boundless imagination and multidisciplinary genius established him as one of the principal architects of twentieth-century culture. Born in Maisons-Laffitte near Paris, Cocteau emerged as a prodigy whose creative output spanned literature, cinema, theater, music, and the visual arts, driven by an enduring conviction that beauty, myth, and imagination served as universal languages. A central figure within the Parisian avant-garde, he moved fluidly among and collaborated with seminal modernists such as Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray—a circle of creators actively redefining modern thought through rigorous experimentation. His early collaboration with Picasso and Erik Satie on Parade (1917) for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes signaled a new epoch of interdisciplinary art, merging music, design, and performance into an imaginative whole.
Cocteau's visual art, defined by its clean, fluid line work, mythological motifs, and a serene, lyrical simplicity, balances classical elegance with modern abstraction. His monumental sacred murals for the Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer and the Chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples in Milly-la-Forêt represent some of the most significant achievements in sacred modern art. His contributions to cinema and literature are equally groundbreaking; his novels, including Les Enfants Terribles, and his theatrical and cinematic masterpieces like La Machine Infernale, Les Parents Terribles, La Belle et la Bête, Orphée, and Le Testament d'Orphée, pioneered a poetic cinematic vision that deeply informed subsequent generations of directors, from Federico Fellini and Jean-Luc Godard to David Lynch and Guillermo del Toro.
In the fields of fashion and costume, his collaborations with Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, and Elsa Schiaparelli fused high art and couture, while his intimate partnership and creative association with Jean Marais inspired some of his most profound works. Cocteau's work bridges classical mythology and modern psychology, dream and reality—an aesthetic legacy that continues to influence contemporary figures ranging from Andy Warhol and David Bowie to Alexander McQueen. His work is preserved in premier institutional collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, the Musée Jean Cocteau in Menton, the Tate, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The enduring demand for his graphic and visual output is highlighted by his current auction record, achieved when Jean Marais dans "La Belle et la Bête" (1946) sold for 611,622 USD at Sotheby's Paris on October 18, 2023.