Cocteau - The ancient theater

Throughout his life, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) drew as much as he wrote: drawings, theater sets, lithographs, engravings, sculptures, frescoes… His style is clear and stripped down. He was able to combine so happily Hellenic culture with French culture and his attraction to modernity with an unfailing interest in the myths of Antiquity. Expressing simply and lucidly the essential without sacrificing complexity, Cocteau's work, like Greek art, has the power of existence and the elegance of the invisible. Economy of line is his motto. This ceramic dated 1962 is exhibited at the Bastion of Menton, which has housed the Jean Cocteau testament museum since 1967. The bastion dates from 1636, it was built in Menton, on the seaside, by Prince Honoré II Grimaldi to protect the city from the Spanish. Menton then belonged to the Principality of Monaco.

For the open-air theatre of Cap d'Ail, he wanted to capture the wild essence of the site without distorting it and to install a tiered theatre there, in the antique style, which would provide a permanent setting for summer performances. The final result, completed in 1962, is an interpretation of the antique theatre, in which the spaces devoted to the stage (the proskenion) and the orchestra (the orchestra) have merged, and the stage wall has been split in two. The enamelled sets, inspired by Greek mythology, were designed in parallel with the construction. They include the "Great God Pan", Orpheus and Minerva, recurring figures in the poet's imagination. On the stage wall decorated with a golden Greek key, the inscriptions "Comedy" and "Tragedy", in Greek letters, complete the composition.

© Jean Cocteau Committee 2014