Cocteau, Jean (1889–1963)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Leskosky
Keyword(s):  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Jean Cocteau ◽  
Illustrated Books ◽  
The World ◽  
Man Ray

Jean Cocteau (Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau) was an influential, prolific, multi-talented French artist, writer, critic and filmmaker. He wrote poetry, plays, libretti for ballets, journals, and screenplays; he adapted his own and others’ writing for the stage and screen. He illustrated books, painted, created mosaics, tapestries, and stained glass windows, and designed sets and costumes. He also occasionally appeared on stage and in films and starred (essentially playing himself) in his last film Le Testament d’Orphée [The Testament of Orpheus] (1960). Outside France, Cocteau remains best known for his films and for his plays, which regularly continue to be staged around the world. Cocteau was born in Maisons-Lafitte, France, on July 5, 1889, to a wealthy, art-conscious family and began to attract attention with his poetry in his late teens. He was friends with and collaborated creatively with the most prominent artists of his time. Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and photographer Man Ray, for example, all did portraits of him. It was to a young Cocteau in 1912 that ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev issued his famous challenge, ‘Etonne-moi!’ [‘Astonish me!’].

Satie, Erik Alfred Leslie (1866–1925)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel N. Dorf
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Claude Debussy ◽  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
John Cage ◽  
Jean Cocteau ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Piano Works ◽  
Man Ray ◽  
Les Six ◽  
Francis Picabia

Erik Satie’s compositions, writings, and humor played an important role in many modernist movements of the twentieth century. Experimenting with simple forms, neoclassicism, mysticism, satire, and Dadaism, Satie collaborated with prominent artists, musicians, and institutions including Vincent Hypsa, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Rene Clair, Francis Picabia, Claude Debussy, Man Ray, the Ballets Russe, the Ballets Suédois. Most recognized today for early his modal, pseudo-antique dances, the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, Satie also composed popular tunes, humorous piano works that mocked musical conventions, avant-garde ballets, as well as numerous mystical, irreverent, and nonsensical writings and drawings. His works and persona, sometimes whimsical, arcane, gothic, mystical, or Dadaistic inspired later generations of modernist artists and composers such as Les Six, Virgil Thomson, and John Cage.

Parade

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliet Bellow
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
Jean Cocteau ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Production Team ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Cabaret Songs ◽  
Erik Satie ◽  
One Act

A one-act ballet on the theme of a fairground sideshow, Parade was produced by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and premiered on May 18, 1917 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. According to Jean Cocteau, the poet who wrote the ballet’s libretto, the impetus for Parade originated in 1912 with Diaghilev’s command, ‘‘Astonish me!’’ To fulfill Diaghilev’s mandate, Cocteau assembled a production team drawn from the Parisian avant-garde: for the score, he recruited the composer Erik Satie, known for experimental piano compositions such as Gymnopédies (1888) and for cabaret songs performed at the Montmartre cabaret Le Chat Noir. In 1916, Cocteau secured the participation of Pablo Picasso, a painter associated with the Cubist movement of the early 1910s, to design the overture curtain, set, and costumes. Working with the choreographer Léonide Massine, this group produced a ballet-pantomime featuring familiar characters from the circus, variety shows, and cinema. Mixing various forms of art and entertainment, Parade used dance to explore the unstable relationship between elite and popular culture.

Assemblage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Pantazis
Keyword(s):  
Modern Art ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
Robert Rauschenberg ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
Man Ray ◽  
Joseph Cornell

Assemblage is an artistic form that involves the transformation of non-art objects into two-dimensional or three-dimensional artistic compositions. Together with abstraction, it has been considered one of the two most significant innovations of modern art. The term assemblage was first used in 1953 by critic, philosopher and poet Max Loreau in describing French artist Jean Dubuffet’s series of imprint collages of butterflies’ wings. The term was popularized by the Museum of Modern Art’s 1961 exhibition The Art of Assemblage, which showcased the work of early 20th-century European artists, such as Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, George Braque and Kurt Schwitters, and Americans such as Joseph Cornell, Man Ray and Robert Rauschenberg.

Massine, Léonide (1896–1979)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Straus
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Popular Theater ◽  
Jean Cocteau ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Erik Satie

Russian-born Léonide Massine’s career flourished in the cities of Western Europe, where he made his name as a lead dancer and choreographer for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1909–29). Massine’s choreographic development coincided with and helped to define the Ballets Russes’s modernist period. As Diaghilev’s protégé, Massine absorbed principles of Cubism and Futurism, consequently developing an angular, distorted movement style, heralded for its intensity and polyrhythmic complexity, along with its satiric and cinematic elements. Massine’s Parade (1917), in collaboration with Pablo Picasso (decor and costumes), Erik Satie (music), and Jean Cocteau (libretto), is recognized as a landmark of ballet modernism. Like other modernists, Massine incorporated national and folk material (commedia dell’arte to flamenco) and popular theater forms (including film) as tools for creative innovation. Following his departure from the Ballets Russes, Massine became interested in formalism and abstraction, which he expressed in a series of symphonic ballets. The most recognized dance artist of the 1920s and 1930s, Massine’s magnificent presence as a performer, even an aging one, can be seen in the film The Red Shoes (1947).

scholarly journals Dating Nathan: The Oldest Stained Glass Window in England?

Heritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 937-960
Author(s):  
Laura Ware Adlington ◽  
Ian C. Freestone ◽  
Léonie Seliger
Keyword(s):  
Trace Elements ◽  
In Situ Analysis ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Rectangular Shape ◽  
The World ◽  
3D Printed ◽  
Second Period ◽  
Medieval Glass

Relatively little is known about stained glass windows in England predating c. 1170; however, art-historical evaluation by Caviness (1987) argued that four figures from the “Ancestors series” of Canterbury Cathedral, usually dated to the late 12th and early 13th century, in fact date earlier (c. 1130–1160). This would place them amongst the earliest stained glass in England, and the world. Building on our previous work, we address Caviness’s hypothesis using a methodology based upon analysis of a few, well-measured heavy trace elements and a 3D-printed attachment for a pXRF spectrometer that facilitates in situ analysis. The results confirm two major periods of “recycling” or re-using medieval glass. The first is consistent with Caviness’s argument that figures predating the 1174 fire were reused in the early 13th century. The results suggest that in addition to figures, ornamental borders were reused, indicating the presence of more early glass than previously thought. In the second period of recycling (1790s), surviving figures from the Ancestors series were removed and adapted into rectangular panels for insertion into large Perpendicular-style windows elsewhere in the cathedral. The results show that the glasses used to adapt the panels to a rectangular shape were broadly contemporary with the glasses used to glaze the original Ancestors windows, again representing a more extensive presence of medieval glass in the windows.

scholarly journals Vintage Ladies in Cubist Exhibitions: Pablo Picasso's Cubist Women and Judith Butler's Performativity

k ta ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-35
Author(s):  
Samaneh Saeid ◽  
Laleh Atashi
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
The Way

As a prominent figure in the history of painting, Pablo Picasso has bestowed upon the world his uniquely striking paintings in different styles, the most revolutionary of which being his Cubist art. The representation of women occupies a significant space in Picasso’s Cubist works. While the painter’s style is highly revolutionary, rejecting the accepted principles of painting, the subject matter does not change as such: nude women are objectified with a cubist look. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity which examines the roots of naturalized concepts of gender, has been applied to Picasso’s representations of women in his cubist paintings. This research examines the way naturalized definitions of gender have found their way into Picasso’s paintings.  By applying the Butlerian concept of gender performativity to a number of Picasso’s cubist artworks, we try to indicate how stereotypes of gender linger in the discourse of modernism. Analyses lead to the conclusion that although the cubist style of painting is an experimentation in form, hardly any avant-gardism can be traced in the representation of gendered identities in Picasso.

scholarly journals 'To the Curious Enquirer': Depictions of Pacific Peoples in Popular Illustrated Books from Paris and London c.1775-1810

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Vivienne Ruth Morrell
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Illustrated Books ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Value Judgements ◽  
New Material

<p>This study considers a range of illustrated encyclopaedias published in London and Paris in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries depicting peoples of the Pacific or Oceania. Using a framework of curiosity, exoticism, and costume iconography, as well as considering relevant contemporary developments, I argue that, despite the widespread appeal to 'curiosity', the books reveal a fairly superficial interest, at a popular level, in other peoples: one that is mainly interested in contrasting 'civilised' Europe with less civilised or 'savage' others. The genres to which these books belonged developed in the sixteenth century, and the books considered in this study followed their genre traditions, fitting the 'new discoveries' of Oceania into these existing traditions. The frontispieces set the tone of the books, and embodied moral value judgements revealing European views of political, social and economic relations between Europe and other peoples and countries at that time. They were also following an iconographic tradition set down much earlier and generally failed to acknowledge recent events that challenged these prevailing views. I consider how the images of Oceanic peoples in the French costume books were developed (or as I argue 'invented') from the source material, which was mainly images in the published accounts of Captain Cook's three voyages. In inventing images designed to please the eye, the sources chosen reveal the prejudices and expectations of European readers. But how were the 'new' Oceanic peoples incorporated into these books? By seeing Oceanic peoples as part of America it was easy to fit them into existing prejudices about 'savages' and into existing pictorial conventions for depicting 'savages'. For an audience expecting to see 'savages' wearing grass skirts and feather headdresses these images would have appeared 'authentic'. My study will highlight more popular views rather than the views of philosophers, or the voyagers' accounts, which understandably have been given more academic attention. These books are overlooked today because they are derivative and their images are not necessarily ethnographically accurate; yet they were popular in their time. They represent a conservative Eurocentric viewpoint and their inclusion of new material from Oceanic voyages did not challenge these views. Images and texts such as these likely reinforced European views of their own superiority and made it easy to justify missionary activity and colonisation in various parts of the world, particularly Oceania.</p>

On the Road to Adulthood: Michel Gondry’s Microbe & Gasoline and the French Road Movie

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-114
Author(s):  
Marcelline Block ◽  
Jennifer Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Jean Cocteau ◽  
Steven Spielberg ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
The Road ◽  
Childhood Play ◽  
The World ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Definition Of

In their chapter, Marcelline Block and Jennifer Kirby consider cinematic lineage and influence. This chapter argues that Gondry’s most recent feature, Microbe & Gasoline, a picaresque narrative, draws from the conventions of the road movie through its focus on social outsiders, light-hearted depiction of run-ins with the police, and emphasis on male bonding. This film also provides commentary on the notion and definition of “home” in France. Microbe & Gasoline, which follows two teenage boys taking a 250-mile-long journey through France in a makeshift house on wheels, links a coming-of-age narrative to a growing awareness of the complexities and divisions within France. In this film, Gondry depicts his trademark childhood play and whimsy alongside a sobering adult realization of injustices in the world. Representing yet another form of border crossing, the film blends conventions from the American road movie with the French road movie’s potential for what Gott calls “elaborating flexible, transnational and multicultural alternatives to a monolithic version of France.” It serves to reinforce Gondry’s status as an auteur whose work is frequently transnational in character, recalling Hill’s claim that Gondry is the spiritual heir to Jean Cocteau and Georges Méliès, as well as Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg.

Massine/Picasso/Parade

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Gay Morris
Keyword(s):  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
Jean Cocteau ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
Erik Satie

This essay concerns Leonide Massine's choreography for the Ballets Russes production of Parade (1917). The ballet was groundbreaking in its incorporation of Cubist and Futurist innovations and for its vanguard collaborators, which included Erik Satie, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso. Massine was only twenty-one at the time, and his choreography has often been dismissed as inconsequential. I argue that Massine not only made a major contribution to the collaboration, but that his working methods and approach to choreography owed more to Cubism's reformist tendencies than to Futurism's call for a radical remaking of art. In laying out a path close to Cubism, Massine set western ballet in the direction of the high modernism that would later be epitomized by George Balanchine.

Robert Falcon Scott: a Tasmanian connection

Polar Record ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-194
Author(s):  
Patrick G. Quilty ◽  
Gillian Winter
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
New Information ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
Foundation Stone

ABSTRACTThe Edge Anglican church (originally St Alban's) in the northern Hobart suburb of Claremont has above its main altar a triptych stained glass window, a memorial to Robert Falcon Scott R.N. New information suggests that the designer/manufacturer was Auguste Fischer of Melbourne, a close associate of the church's architect, Alan Cameron Walker of Hobart. The window was promised by Mrs Edith Knight at the laying of the foundation stone of the church in July 1913, five months after Scott's death became known to the world. Lady Ellison-Macartney attended the ceremony. She was Scott's sister and wife of the recently appointed governor of Tasmania, Sir William Ellison-Macartney. Other members of Scott's family were also living in Hobart at the time. The Ellison-Macartneys and their daughter Esther attended the dedication of the window on 17 October 1915. Admiral E.R.G.R. Evans, second in command of Scott's expedition, spoke to The Royal Society of Tasmania on 29 March 1930, on the topic of Scott's last Antarctic venture.

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