36 Facts About Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud is best known for his writings, as well as his work in the theatre and cinema.

Antonin Artaud's parents were first cousins: his grandmothers were sisters from Smyrna.

At age five, Artaud was diagnosed with meningitis, which had no cure at the time.

Antonin Artaud attended the College Sacre-Coeur, a Catholic middle and high school, from 1907 to 1914.

Towards the end of his tenure at the College, Antonin Artaud noticeably withdrew from social life and "destroyed most of his written work and gave away his books".

Antonin Artaud was discharged early due to "an unspecified health reason".

In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed Antonin Artaud laudanum, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiates.

In Paris, Antonin Artaud worked with a number of celebrated French "teacher-directors", including Jacques Copeau, Andre Antoine, Georges and Ludmilla Pitoeff, Charles Dullin, Firmin Gemier and Lugne-Poe.

Antonin Artaud was originally a strong proponent of Dullin's teaching and they shared a strong interest in east Asian theater, specifically performance traditions from Bali and Japan.

Antonin Artaud remained with them through the next year, when he shifted his focus to work in the cinema.

In 1923, Antonin Artaud submitted poems to La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, a prominent French literary journal.

Antonin Artaud continued to publish some of his most influential works in the NRF.

Antonin Artaud had an active career in the cinema as a critic, actor, and writer.

Antonin Artaud wrote a number of film scenarios, ten of which have survived.

Antonin Artaud was briefly associated with the surrealists, before Andre Breton expelled him from the movement in 1927.

In 1931, Antonin Artaud saw Balinese dance performed at the Paris Colonial Exposition.

In 1935, Antonin Artaud staged an original adaptation of Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci at the Theatre des Folies-Wagram in Paris.

Antonin Artaud was concerned with conveying the menacing nature of the Cenci's presence and the reverberations of their incest relationship though physical discordance, as if an invisible "force-field" surrounded them.

In 1938, Antonin Artaud published The Theatre and Its Double, one of his most important texts.

In 1935, Antonin Artaud decided to go to Mexico, where he was convinced there was "a sort of deep movement in favour of a return to civilisation before Cortez".

Antonin Artaud lived in Norogachi, a Raramuri village in the Sierra Tarahumara.

Antonin Artaud claimed to have participated in peyote rites, though scholars have questioned this.

In 1937, Antonin Artaud returned to France, where his friend Rene Thomas gave him a walking-stick of knotted wood that Antonin Artaud believed was the "most sacred relic of the Irish church, the Bachall Isu, or 'Staff of Jesus'" and contained magical powers.

Antonin Artaud traveled to Ireland, landing at Cobh and travelling to Galway, possibly in an effort to return the staff.

In Dublin, Antonin Artaud found himself penniless and spent most of his trip in "hostels for the homeless".

On his return voyage, Antonin Artaud believed he was being attacked by two of the ship's crew members.

Antonin Artaud retaliated and was put in a straitjacket; upon his return to France he was involuntarily retained by the police and transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

Antonin Artaud spent the rest of his life moving between different institutions, depending on his condition and world circumstances.

In 1943, when France was occupied by the Germans and Italians, Robert Desnos arranged to have Antonin Artaud transferred to the psychiatric hospital in Rodez, which was well inside Vichy territory.

At Rodez, Antonin Artaud underwent treatments including electroshock and art therapy.

Antonin Artaud denounced the electroshock treatments and consistently pleaded to have them suspended, while ascribing to them "the benefit of having returned him to his name and to his self mastery".

Antonin Artaud visited a Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the Orangerie in Paris and wrote the study Van Gogh le suicide de la societe ["Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society"]; in 1947, the French magazine K published it.

Porche refused to broadcast it even though the panel were almost unanimously in favor of Antonin Artaud's work being broadcast.

Antonin Artaud died on 4 March 1948 in a psychiatric clinic in Ivry-sur-Seine, a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris.

Antonin Artaud was found by the gardener of the estate seated alone at the foot of his bed holding a shoe, and it was suspected that he died from a lethal dose of the drug chloral hydrate, although it is unknown whether he was aware of its lethality.

Antonin Artaud has had a profound influence on theatre, avant-garde art, literature, psychiatry and other disciplines.