1. Jean Maurice Eugene Clement Cocteau was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic.
28 Facts About Jean Cocteau
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Jean Cocteau was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-century and hugely influential on the surrealist and Dadaist movements, among others.
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The National Observer suggested that "of the artistic generation whose daring gave birth to Twentieth Century Art, Cocteau came closest to being a Renaissance man".
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Jean Cocteau was described as "one of [the] avant-garde's most successful and influential filmmakers" by AllMovie.
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Jean Cocteau, according to Annette Insdorf, "left behind a body of work unequalled for its variety of artistic expression".
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Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, to Georges Jean Cocteau and Eugenie Lecomte, a socially prominent Parisian family.
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Jean Cocteau published his first volume of poems, Aladdin's Lamp, at nineteen.
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Jean Cocteau soon became known in Bohemian artistic circles as The Frivolous Prince, the title of a volume he published at twenty-two.
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Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev persuaded Jean Cocteau to write a scenario for a ballet, which resulted in Parade in 1917.
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An important exponent of avant-garde art, Jean Cocteau had great influence on the work of others, including a group of composers known as Les Six.
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Jean Cocteau was supported throughout his recovery by his friend and correspondent, Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain.
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Under Maritain's influence, Jean Cocteau made a temporary return to the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
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Jean Cocteau again returned to the Church later in life and undertook a number of religious art projects.
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Jean Cocteau wrote the libretto for Igor Stravinsky's opera-oratorio Oedipus rex, which had its original performance in the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris on 30 May 1927.
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In 1930 Jean Cocteau made his first film The Blood of a Poet, publicly shown in 1932.
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Jean Cocteau praised the French republic for serving as a haven for the persecuted, and applauded Picasso's anti-war painting Guernica as a cross that "Franco would always carry on his shoulder".
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In 1940, Jean Cocteau signed a petition circulated by the Ligue internationale contre l'antisemitisme which protested the rise of racism and antisemitism in France, and declared himself "ashamed of his white skin" after witnessing the plight of colonized peoples during his travels.
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Jean Cocteau effusively praised Breker's sculptures in an article entitled published in 1942.
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In 1945 Jean Cocteau was one of several designers who created sets for the Theatre de la Mode.
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Jean Cocteau drew inspiration from filmmaker Rene Clair while making Tribute to Rene Clair: I Married a Witch.
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In 1956 Jean Cocteau decorated the Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer with mural paintings.
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Jean Cocteau was the author of the mildly homoerotic and semi-autobiographical Le Livre blanc, published anonymously in 1928.
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Jean Cocteau never repudiated its authorship and a later edition of the novel features his foreword and drawings.
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In 1947 Paul Morihien published a clandestine edition of Querelle de Brest by Jean Genet, featuring 29 very explicit erotic drawings by Cocteau.
25.
In recent years several albums of Jean Cocteau's homoerotica have been available to the general public.
26.
Jean Cocteau cast Marais in The Eternal Return, Beauty and the Beast, Ruy Blas, and Orpheus.
27.
Weisweiller and Jean Cocteau did not reconcile until shortly before Jean Cocteau's death.
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In 1955, Jean Cocteau was made a member of the Academie Francaise and The Royal Academy of Belgium.