Le French May 2013 @ Jean Cocteau 'Spirit of the 20th Century Parisian Scene" Exhibition

 For the first time, Le French May focus on one particular theme: the 1920’s, a boiling period for art, fashion and society by giving a taste of what is the DNA of France and held an exhibition of an active artist in 1920s - Jean Cocteau “Spirit of the 20^th Century Parisian Scene” in Hong Kong City Hall. It is a decisive period, when France was the center of the art world and witnessed the convergence of multiple talents and influences. This major exhibition rediscovers the multi-talented French artist of the swinging twenties, whose inventive poetry and graphic lines widely inspired his contemporaries Picasso, Matisse, Chirico, Warhol and Modigliani, among others.

Aiming at sharing the best of French and international culture, Le French May invests all arts fields, from dance to music, from cinema to visual arts, from fashion to gastronomy, with a constant wish to surprise the public. Presenting the latest contemporary creation as well as some major classical parts of French heritage. Works of Jean Cocteau as a Photographer and a collection of posters from his previous exhibitions (1960 – 2012) are presented during the time of the exhibition.

This major exhibition presents some 230 works by the graphic poet Jean Cocteau as well as masterpieces created by artists he considered as friends and associates. Inspired by Cocteau’s sense of poetry and design, these include Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Leon Bakst, Bernard Buffet, Leonard Foujita, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and Andy Warhol.

The exhibition is composed of iconic pieces from the important private collection owned by Ioannis Kontaxopoulos and Alexander Prokopchuk as well as exceptional loans from Jean Cocteau’s house in Milly-La-Forêt and the Maison Cartier. Centred on the themes that haunted Cocteau throughout his life, namely self-portraits, mythology, religion, eroticism, circus, bullfighting, the exhibition showcases illustrated books, drawings, oil paintings, prints, painted pebbles, jewellery, costume and set design and other poetic objects to demonstrate the eclectic panorama of his collaborations and masterpieces. In order to illustrate this particular contribution of Cocteau, with omitting the essence: the encounter of the public with Cocteau’s art. The exhibition will be divided into thematic sections: 

<Movie> The showcase of La Villa Santo Sospir and Cocteau's cinematic trilogy: Le Sang d’un poète (Blood of a Poet, 1930), Orphée (Orpheus, 1950) and Le Testament d’Orphée (The Testament of Orpheus, 1960). <Ceramics> A special place is then reserved for ceramics of the poet, through a selection of fifteen terracotta objects, including three successful badges: The Harlequin with bat, Janus, and The Big goat-neck for which Jean Cocteau wrote that he was looking for "the noble style of the Chinese and negros works." In fact, from 1957 to 1963, Cocteau created more than three hundred pieces of pottery in a workshop in Villefranche-sur-Mer which be longed to a couple of potters, Marie-Madeleine Jolly and Philippe Madeline. These ceramics are characterized by minimal designs based on graphics. Pencils made out of oxides, polychrome enamels and slip (barbotine) are used sparingly in the utmost respect of terracotta, their function being to highlight the value while establishing a relationship of charm with it.

<Poet> Seven sections are devoted to the recurring themes in the work of the poet: Greek mythology which was often combined with his personal mythology; religion, as a connivance between God and man; eroticism, or sexuality, which was, according to him, the strength of his work; bullfighting, seen as the marriage of a solar matador with a lunar beast; circus as a lesson of delicate balance; profile as a calligraphy or graphic signature.

 <Self-portraits and Portraits> reunite forty self-portraits and portraits by Cocteau. In the self-portraits, the initial purity of the face seems to evolve with the very violent passions which cross their author: the influence of opium, old age and death. In his self-portraits as well as the portraits of friends, peers or masters, Cocteau, thanks to his line that is concise and related to the essence, searches the detail which brings out both the resemblance and the character or the mood of the person.

<Jean Cocteau as an art critic> two masters are selected that he appreciated a lot: Henri Matisse and Georges Braque. By making the works of these artists in relation to the excerpts from Cocteau’s writings on them, the visitor realizes how Cocteau founded a discipline that he called "poetry criticism" while refusing technical and theoretical statement. <Synergies> The focus of this section entitled "Synergies" is also in the parallel established between the graphic work of Cocteau and that of his contemporaries. Through this section the visitors of the exhibition will thus appreciate how artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Bernard Buffet, Christian Bérard, Feri Varga, Leonard Foujita, Leopold Survage, or, more recently, Raymond Moretti and Serge Dieudonné, could visualize the emotions of Cocteau’s poetry.

<Cocteau seen by painters> ends with the works of artist friends who celebrate the poet through the art of portrait including: Cocteau seen by painters such as Jacques-Emile Blanche, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Bernard Buffet and Andy Warhol, thanks to the loans from The House of Jean Cocteau in Milly-La-Forêt, or by photographers such as Raymond Voinquel, Ostier Andre Pierre Jahan, Brassaï, Sam Levin and Lucien Clergue. A contemporary photographer, David Alouane, who is part of these successive youths who have always supported the poet, recreated with talent, on the occasion of this exhibition, ten iconic images of Jean Cocteau’s works, engraved forever in the collective subconscious, like Orpheus crossing the mirror or Dargelos throwing the snowball by which it all began.

Exhibition ends 9th June 2013. Free Admission.For details, visit www.frenchmay.com