Thank you, Francis!, Francis Picabia

January 1923

One must become acquainted with everybody except oneself; one must not know which sex one belongs to; I do not care whether I am male or female, I do not admire men more than I do women. Having no virtue, I am assured of not suffering from them. Many people seek the road which can lead them to their ideal: I have no ideal; the person who parades his ideal is only an arriviste. Undoubtedly, I am also an arriviste, but my lack of scruples is an invention for myself, a subjectivity. Objectively it would consist of awarding myself the légion d'honneur, of wishing to become a minister or of plotting to get into the Institute! Well, for me, all that is shit!

What I like is to invent, to imagine, to make myself a new man every moment, then forget him, forget everything. We should be equipped with a special eraser, gradually effacing our works and the memory of them. Our brain should be nothing back a blackboard, or white, or better, a mirror in which we would see ourselves for a moment, only to turn our back on it two minutes later. My ambition is to be a man sterile for others; the man who set himself up as a school disgusts me, he gives his gonorrhea to artists for nothing and sells it as clearly as possible to amateurs. Actually, writers, painters, and other idiots have passed on the word to fight against the 'monsters', monsters who, naturally, do not exist, who are pure inventions, of man.

Artists are afraid; they whisper in each other's ears about a boogey man which might well prevent them from playing their dirty little tricks! No age, I believe, has been more imbecilic than ours. These gentlemen would have us believe that nothing is happening anymore; the train reversing its engines, it seems, is very pretty to look at, cows are no longer enough! The travelers to this backward Decanville are named: Matisse, Morandi, Braque, Picasso, Léger, de Segonzac, etc., etc. ... What is funniest of all is that they accept, as stationmaster, Louis Vauxcelles, whose great black napkin contains only a foetus!

Since the war, a ponderous and half-witted sentiment of morality rules the entire world. The moralists never discern the moral facts of appearances, the Church for them is a morality like the morality of drinking water, or of not daring to wash one's ass in front of a parrot! All that is arbitrary; people with morals are badly informed, and those who are informed know that the others will not inform themselves.

There is no such thing as a moral problem; morality like modesty is one of the greatest stupidities. The asshole of morality should take the form of a chamber-pot, that's all the objectivity I ask of it.

This contagious disease called morality has succeeded in contaminating all of the so-called artistic milieux; writers and painters become serious people, and soon we shall have a minister of painting and literature; I don't doubt that there will be still more frightful assininities. The poets no longer know what to say, so some are becoming Catholics, others believers; these men manufacture their little scribblings as Félix Potin does his cold chicken preserves; people say that Dada is the end of romanticism, that I am a clown, and they cry long live classicism which will save the pure souls and their ambitions, the simple souls so dear to those afflicted by dreams of grandeur!

However, I don not abandon the hope that nothing is finished yet, I am here, and so are several friends who have a love of life, a life we do not know and which interests us for that very reason.

originally published in Littérature, new series no. 8, Paris, January 1923 as 'Francis Merci!'

above copied from: http://www.391.org/manifestos/1923picabia.htm

Apropos of 'Readymades, Marcel Duchamp

In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.
A few months later I bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called "Pharmacy" after adding two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon.
In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote "In advance of the broken arm."
It was around that time that the word "Readymade" came to my mind to designate this form of manifestation.
A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these "Readymades" was never dictated by aesthetic delectation.
The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste ... in fact a complete anaesthesia.
One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the "Readymade."
That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal.
Sometimes I would add a graphic detail of presentation which, in order to satisfy my craving for alliterations, would be called "Readymade aided."
At another time, wanting to expose the basic antinomy between art and "Readymades," I imagined a "Reciprocal Readymade": use a Rembrandt as an ironing board!
I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the production of "Readymades" to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my "Readymades" against such a contamination.
Another aspect of the "Readymade" is its lack of uniqueness... the replica of the "Readymade" delivering the same message, in fact nearly every one of the "Readymades" existing today is not an original in the conventional sense.
A final remark to this egomaniac's discourse:
Since the tubes of paint used by an artist are manufactured and readymade products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are "Readymades aided" and also works of assemblage.


Written in 1961

above copied from: http://members.peak.org/~dadaist/English/Graphics/readymades.html

Proclamation without Pretension, Tristan Tzara

Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance there is no transparence
or appearance

MUSICIANS SMASH YOUR INSTRUMENTS
BLIND MEN take the stage

THE SYRINGE is only for my understanding. I write because it is
natural exactly the way I piss the way I'm sick

ART NEEDS AN OPERATION

Art is a PRETENSION warmed by the
TIMIDITY of the urinary basin, the hysteria born
in THE STUDIO

We are in search of
the force that is direct pure sober
UNIQUE we are in search of NOTHING
we affirm the VITALITY of every IN-
STANT

the anti-philosophy of spontaneous acrobatics

At this moment I hate the man who whispers
before the intermission-eau de cologne-
sour theatre. THE JOYOUS WIND

If each man says the opposite it is because he is
right

Get ready for the action of the geyser of our blood
-submarine formation of transchromatic aero-
planes, cellular metals numbered in
the flight of images

above the rules of the
and its control

BEAUTIFUL

It is not for the sawed-off imps
who still worship their navel.



Above copied from: http://members.peak.org/~dadaist/English/TextOnly/proclamation.html

Cabaret Voltaire, Hugo Ball

From Cabaret Voltaire - Issue 1
- Hugo Ball

When I founded the Cabaret Voltaire, I was sure that there must be a few young people in Switzerland who like me were interested not only in enjoying their independence but also in giving proof of it. I went to Herr Ephraim, the owner of the Meierei, and said, "Herr Ephraim, please let me have your room. I want to start a night-club." Herr Ephraim agreed and gave me the room. And I went to some people I knew and said, "Please give me a picture, or a drawing, or an engraving. I should like to put on an exhibition in my night-club." I went to the friendly Zürich press and said, "Put in some announcements. There is going to be an international cabaret. We shall do great things." And they gave me pictures and they put in my annoucements. So on 5th February we had a cabaret. Mademoiselle Hennings and Mademoiselle Leconte sang French and Danish chansons. Herr Tristan Tzara recited Rumanian poetry. A balalaika orchestra played delightful folk-songs and dances.

I received much support and encouragement from Herr M. Slodki, who designed the poster, and from Herr Hans Arp, who supplied some Picassos, as well as works of his own, and obtained for me pictures by his friends O. van Rees and Artur Segall. Much support also from Messrs. Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco and Max Oppenheimer, who readily agreed to take part in the cabaret. We organized a Russian evening and, a little later, a French one (works by Apollinaire, Max Jacob, André Salmon, A. Jarry, Laforgue and Rimbaud). On 26th February Richard Huelsenbeck arrived from Berlin and on 30th March we performed some stupendous Negro music (toujours avec la grosse caisse: boum boum boum boum - drabatja mo gere drabatja mo bonooooooooo -). Monsieur Laban was present at the performance and was very enthusiastic. Herr Tristan Tzara was the initiator of a performance by Messrs. Tzara, Huelsenbeck and Janco (the first in Zürich and in the world) of simultaneist verse by Messrs. Henri Barzun and Fernand Divoire, as well as a poème simultané of his own composition, which is reproduced on pages six and seven. The persent booklet is published by us with the support of our friends in France, Italy and Russia. It is intended to present to the Public the activities and interests of the Cabaret Voltaire, which has as its sole purpose to draw attention, across the barriers of war and nationalism, to the few independent spirits who live for other ideals. The next objective of the artists who are assembled here is the publication of a revue internationale. La revue paraîtra à Zurich et portera le nom "Dada" ("Dada"). Dada Dada Dada Dada.

Zürich, 15th May 1916

Dadaist Manifesto, Tristan Tzara, Franz Jung, George Grosz, Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Gerhard Preisz, Raoul Hausmann

April 1918

Dadaist Manifesto (Berlin)

The signatories of this manifesto have, under the battle cry

DADA!!!!
gathered together to put forward a new art from which they expect the realisation of new ideas. So what is DADAISM, then?

The word DADA symbolises the most primitive relationship with the surrounding reality; with Dadaism, a new reality comes into its own.

Life is seen in a simultaneous confusion of noises, colours and spiritual rhythms which in Dadaist art are immediately captured by the sensational shouts and fevers of its bold everyday psyche and in all its brutal reality. This is the dividing line between Dadaism and all other artistic trends and especially Futurism which fools have very recently interpreted as a new version of Impressionism.

For the first time, Dadaism has refused to take an aesthetic attitude towards life. It tears to pieces all those grand words like ethics, culture, interiorisation which are only covers for weak muscles.

THE BRUITIST POEM

describes a tramcar exactly as it is, the essence of a tramcar with the yawns of Mr Smith and the shriek of brakes.
THE SIMULTANEOUS POEM

teaches the interrelationship of things, while Mr Smith reads his paper, the Balkan express crosses the Nisch bridge and a pig squeals in the cellar of Mr Bones the butcher.
THE STATIC POEM

turns words into individuals. The letters of the word " wood " create the forest itself with the leafiness of its trees, the uniforms of the foresters and the wild boar. It could also create the Bellevue Boarding House or Bella Vista. Dadaism leads to fantastic new possibilities in forms of expression in all arts. It made Cubism into a dance on the stage, it spread the Futurist bruitist music all over Europe (for it had no desire to maintain this in its purely Italian context). The word DADA shows the international nature of a movement which is bound by no frontier, religion or profession. Dada is the international expression of our time, the great rebellion of artistic movements, the artistic reflexion of all those many attacks, peace congresses, scuffles in the vegetable markets, social get-togethers, etc., etc.
Dada demands the use of

NEW MATERIALS IN PAINTING

Dada is a club which has been founded in Berlin which you can join without any obligations. Here, every man is president and everyone has a vote in artistic matters. Dada is not some pretext to bolster up the pride of a few literary men (as our enemies would have the world believe). Dada is a state of mind which can be revealed in any conversation so that one is forced to say: "This man is a Dadaist, this one isn't." For these reasons, the Dada Club has members all over the world, in Honolulu as well as New Orleans and Meseritz. To be a Dadaist might sometimes mean being a businessman or a politician rather than an artist, being an artist only by accident. To be a Dadaist means being thrown around by events, being against sedimentation; it means sitting for a short instant in an armchair, but it also means putting your life in danger (M. Weng pulled his revolver out of his trouser pocket).... A fabric tears under the hand, one says yes to a life that seeks to grow by negation. Say yes, say no; the hurly- burly of existence is a good training ground for the real Dadaist. Here he is lying down, hunting, riding a bicycle, half Pantagruel, half St Francis, laughing and laughing. Down with aesthetic-ethical tendencies! Down with the anaemic abstraction of Expressionism! Down with the literary hollow-heads and their theories for improving the world!
Long live Dadaism in word and image! Long live the Dada events of this world! To be against this manifesto is to be a Dadaist!

Berlin, April
Tristan Tzara, Franz Jung, George Grosz, Marcel Janco, Richard Hülsenbeck, Gerhard Preisz, Raoul Hausmann.

copied from: http://www.391.org/manifestos/191804dadaist.htm

monsieur antipyrine's manifesto, Tristan Tzara

14th july 1916

DADA is our intensity: it erects inconsequential bayonets and the Sumatral head of German babies; Dada is life with neither bedroom slippers nor parallels; it is against and for unity and definately against the future; we are wise enough to know that our brains are going to become flabby cushions, that our anti dogmatism is as exclusive as a civil servant, and that we cry liberty but are not free; a severe necessity with entire discipline nor morals and that we spit on humanity.

DADA remains within the framework of European weaknesses, it's still shit, but from now on we want to shit in different colours so as to adorn the zoo of art with all the flags of all the consulates.

We are circus ringmasters and we can be found whistling amongst the winds of fairgrounds, in convents, prostitutions, theatres, realities, feelings, restaurants, ohoho, bang bang.

We declare that the motor car is a feeling that has cosseted us quite enough in the dilatoriness of its abstractions, as have transatlantic liners, noises and ideas. And while we put on a show of being facile, we are actually searching for the central essence of things, and are pleased if we can hide it; we have no wish to count the windows of the marvellous elite, for DADA doesn't exist for anyone, and we want everyone to understand this. This is Dada's balcony, I assure you. From there you can hear all the military marches, and come down cleaving the air like a seraph landing in a public baths to piss and understand the parable.

DADA is neither madness, nor wisdom, nor irony, look at me, dear bourgeois.

Art used to be a game of nuts in May, children would go gathering words that had a final ring, then they would exude, shout out the verse, and dress it up in dolls' bootees, and the verse became a queen in order to die a little, and the queen became a sardine, and the children ran hither and you, unseen.

Then came the great ambassadors of feeling, who yelled historically in chorus:

Psychology Psychology hee hee

Science Science Science

Long live France

We are not naive

We are successive

We are exclusive

We are not simpletons

and we are perfectly capable of an intelligent discussion.

Be we, DADA, don't agree with them, for art isn't serious, I assure you, and if we reveal the crime so as to show that we are learned denunciators, it's to please you, dear audience, I assure you, and I adore you.

above copied from:

Dada Manifesto, Francis Picabia

Dada Manifesto

by Francis Picabia
march 1920

The Cubists want to cover Dada with snow; it may surprise you, but it is so, they want to empty the snow out of their pipe on to Dada.
Are you sure?
Perfectly, the facts speak for themselves from great grotesque mouths. They think that Dada wants to stop them in their hateful trade: selling pictures at a high price.
Art is dearer than sausages, dearer than women, dearer than anything.
Art is as easy to see as God (see Saint-Sulpice).
Art is a pharmaceutical product for idiots.
Tables turn, thanks to the spirits; pictures and other works of art are like strong- box-tables, the spirit is within them and gets more and more inspired as the prices rise in the salerooms.
Comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy, dear friends.
Dealers do not like painting, they know about the hidden spirit....
Buy reproductions of signed pictures.
Don't be snobbish; having the same picture as your neighbour doesn't make you any less intelligent. No more fly-specks on the walls.
There will be some, all the same, but not quite so many.
Dada will certainly get more and more hated, for its wire-cutters allow it to cut processions singing " Come Darling ", what a sacrilege!
Cubism represents total famine in ideas.
They cubed primitive paintings, cubed Negro sculptures, cubed violins, cubed guitars, cubed picture magazines, cubed shit and girls' profiles and now they want to cube money!!!
Dada, on the other hand, wants nothing, absolutely nothing, and what it does is to make the public say " We understand nothing, nothing, nothing ".
"The Dadaists are nothing, nothing, nothing and they will surely succeed in nothing, nothing, nothing."

391, No. 12, Paris, March 1920
Francis Picabia
who knows nothing, nothing, nothing.

copied from: http://www.391.org/manifestos/192003picabia.htm

Dada Manifesto, Tristan Tzara

23rd march 1918

The magic of a word - DADA - which for journalists has opened the door to an unforeseen world, has for us not the slightest importance.

To launch a manifesto you have to want: A.B. & C., and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3,

work yourself up and sharpen you wings to conquer and circulate lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout, swear, organise prose into a form that is absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its ne plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life in the same way as the latest apparition of a harlot proves the essence of God. His existence had already been proved by the accordion, the landscape and soft words. * To impose one's A.B.C. is only natural - and therefore regrettable. Everyone does it in the form of a crystalbluff-madonna, or a monetary system, or pharmaceutical preparations, a naked leg being the invitation to an ardent and sterile Spring. The love of novelty is a pleasant sort of cross, it's evidence of a naive don't-give-a-damn attitude, a passing, positive, sign without rhyme or reason. But this need is out of date, too. By giving art the impetus of supreme simplicity - novelty - we are being human and true in relation to innocent pleasures; impulsive and vibrant n order to crucify boredom. At the lighted crossroads, alert, attentive, lying in wait for years, in the forest. * I am writing a manifesto and there's nothing I want, and yet I'm saying certain things, and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am against principles (quantifying measures of the moral value of every phrase - too easy; approximation was invested by the impressionists). *

I'm writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, in one single, fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither for nor against them, and I won't explain myself because I hate common sense.

DADA - this is a word that throws up ideas so that they can be shot down; every bourgeois is a little playwright, who invents different subjects and who, instead of situating suitable characters on the level of his own intelligence, like chrysalises on chairs, tries to find causes or objects (according to whichever psychoanalytic method he practices) to give weight to his plot, a talking and self-defining story. *

Every spectator is a plotter, if he tries to explain a word (to know!) From his padded refuge of serpentine complications, he allows his instincts to be manipulated. Whence the sorrows of conjugal life.

To be plain: The amusement of redbellies in the mills of empty skulls.

DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING

If we consider it futile, and if we don't waste our time over a word that doesn't mean anything... The first thought that comes to these minds is of a bacteriological order: at least to discover its etymological, historical or psychological meaning. We read in the papers that the negroes of the Kroo race call the tail of a sacred cow: DADA. A cube, and a mother, in a certain region of Italy, are called: DADA. The word for a hobby horse, a children's nurse, a double affirmative in Russian and Romanian, is also: DADA. Some learned journalists see it as an art for babies, other Jesuscallingthelittlechildrenuntohim saints see it as a return to an unemotional and noisy primitivism - noise and monotonous. A sensitivity cannot be built on the basis of a word; every sort of construction converges into a boring sort of perfection, a stagnant idea of a golden swamp, a relative human product. A work of art shouldn't be beauty per se, because it is dead; neither gay nor sad, neither light nor dark; it is to rejoice or maltreat individualities to serve them up the cakes of sainted haloes or the sweat of a meandering chase through the atmosphere. A work of art is never beautiful, by decree, objectively, for everyone. Criticism is, therefore, useless; it only exists subjectively, for every individual, and without the slightest general characteristic. Do people imagine they have found the psychic basis common to all humanity? The attempt of Jesus, and the Bible, conceal, under their ample, benevolent wings: shit, animals and days. How can anyone hope to order the chaos that constitutes that infinite, formless variation: man? The principle: "Love thy neighbour" is hypocrisy. "Know thyself" is utopian, but more acceptable because it includes malice. No pity. After the carnage we are left with the hope of a purified humanity. I always speak about myself because I don't want to convince, and I have no right to drag others in my wake, I'm not compelling anyone to follow me, because everyone makes his art in his own way, if he knows anything about the joy that rises like an arrow up to the astral strata, or that which descends into the mines stewn with the flowers of corpses and fertile spasms. Stalactites: look everywhere for them, in creches magnified by pain, eyes as white as angels' hares. Thus DADA was born* , out of a need for independence, out of mistrust for the community. People who join us keep their freedom. We don't accept any theories. We've had enough of the cubist and futurist academies: laboratories of formal ideas. Do we make art in order to earn money and keep the dear bourgeoisie happy? Rhymes have the smack of money, and inflexion slides along the line of the stomach in profile. Every group of artists has ended up at this bank, straddling various comets. Leaving the door open to the possibility of wallowing in comfort and food.

Here we are dropping our anchor in fertile ground.

Here we really know what we are talking about, because we have experienced the trembling and the awakening. Drunk with energy, we are revenants thrusting the trident into heedless flesh. We are streams of curses in the tropical abundance of vertiginous



vegetation, resin and rain is our sweat, we bleed and burn with thirst, our blood is strength.

Cubism was born out of a simple manner of looking at objects: Cezanne painted a cup twenty centimetres lower than his eyes, the cubists look at it from above, others complicate it appearance by cutting a vertical section through it and soberly placing it to one side (I'm not forgetting the creators, nor the seminal reasons of unformed matter that they rendered definitive). * The futurist sees the same cup in movement, a succession of objects side by side, mischievously embellished by a few guide-lines. This doesn't stop the canvas being either a good or a bad painting destined to form an investment for intellectual capital. The new painter creates a world whose elements are also its means, a sober, definitive, irrefutable work. The new artist protests: he no longer paints (symbolic and illusionistic reproduction) but creates directly in stone, wood, iron, tin, rocks, or locomotive structures capable of being spun in all directions by the limpid wind of the momentary sensation. * Every pictorial or plastic work is unnecessary , even if it is a monster which terrifies servile minds, and not a sickly-sweet object to adorn the refectories of animals in human garb, those illustrations of the sad fable of humanity. - A painting is the art of making two lines, which have been geometrically observed to be parallel, meet on a canvas, before our eyes, in the reality of a world that has been transposed according to new conditions and possibilities. This world is neither specified nor defined in the work, it belongs, in its innumerable variations, to the spectator. For its creator it has neither case nor theory. Order = disorder; ego = non-ego; affirmation - negation: the supreme radiations of an absolute art. Absolute in the purity of its cosmic and regulated chaos, eternal in that globule that is a second which has no duration, no breath, no light and no control. * I appreciate an old work for its novelty. It is only contrast that links us to the past. * Writers who like to moralise and discuss or ameliorate psychological bases have, apart from a secret wish to win, a ridiculous knowledge of life, which they may have classified, parcelled out, canalised; they are determined to see its categories dance when they beat time. Their readers laugh derisively, but carry on: what's the use?

There is one kind of literature which never reaches the voracious masses. The work of creative writers, written out of the author's real necessity, and for his own benefit. The awareness of a supreme egoism, wherein laws become significant. * Every page should explode, either because of its profound gravity, or its vortex, vertigo, newness, eternity, or because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography. On the one hand there is a world tottering in its flight, linked to the resounding tinkle of the infernal gamut; on the other hand, there are: the new men. Uncouth, galloping, riding astride on hiccups. And there is a mutilated world and literary medicasters in desperate need of amelioration.

I assure you: there is no beginning, and we are not afraid; we aren't sentimental. We are like a raging wind that rips up the clothes of clouds and prayers, we are preparing the great spectacle of disaster, conflagration and decomposition. Preparing to put an end to mourning, and to replace tears by sirens spreading from one continent to another. Clarions of intense joy, bereft of that poisonous sadness. * DADA is the mark of abstraction; publicity and business are also poetic elements.

I destroy the drawers of the brain, and those of social organisation: to sow demoralisation everywhere, and throw heaven's hand into hell, hell's eyes into heaven, to reinstate the fertile wheel of a universal circus in the Powers of reality, and the fantasy of every individual.

A philosophical questions: from which angle to start looking at life, god, ideas, or anything else. Everything we look at is false. I don't think the relative result is any more important than the choice of patisserie or cherries for dessert. The way people have of looking hurriedly at things from the opposite point of view, so as to impose their opinions indirectly, is called dialectic, in other words, heads I wind and tails you lose, dressed up to look scholarly.

If I shout:

Ideal, Ideal, Ideal

Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge

Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom

I have recorded fairly accurately Progress, Law, Morals, and all the other magnificent qualities that various very intelligent people have discussed in so many books in order, finally, to say that even so everyone has danced according to his own personal boomboom, and that he's right about his boomboom: the satisfaction of unhealthy curiosity; private bell-ringing for inexplicable needs; bath; pecuniary difficulties; a stomach with repercussions on to life; the authority of the mystical baton formulated as the grand finale of a phantom orchestra with mute bows, lubricated by philtres with a basis of animal ammonia. With the blue monocle of an angel they have dug out its interior for twenty sous worth of unanimous gratitude. * If all of them are right, and if all pills are only Pink, let's try for once not to be right. * People think they can explain rationally, by means of thought, what they write. But it's very relative. Thought is a fine thing for philosophy, but it's relative. Psychoanalysis is a dangerous disease, it deadens man's anti-real inclinations and systematises the bourgeoisie. There is no ultimate Truth. Dialectics is an amusing machine that leads us (in banal fashion) to the opinions which we would have held in any case. Do people really think that, by the meticulous subtlety of logic, they have demonstrated the truth and established the accuracy of their opinions? Even if logic were confined by the senses it would still be an organic disease. To this element, philosophers like to add: The power of observation. But this magnificent quality of the mind is precisely the proof of its impotence. People observe, they look at things from one or several points of view, they choose them from amongst the millions that exist. Experience too is the result of chance and of individual abilities. * Science revolts me when it becomes a speculative system and loses its utilitarian character - which is so useless - but is at least individual. I hate slimy objectivity, and harmony, the science that considers that everything is always in order. Carry on, children, humanity ... Science says that we are nature's servants: everything is in order, make both love and war. Carry on, children, humanity, nice kind bourgeois and virgin journalists... * I am against systems; the most acceptable system is that of have none on no principle. * To complete oneself, to perfect oneself in one's own pettiness to the point of filling the little vase of oneself with oneself, even the courage to fight for and against thought, all this can suddenly infernally propel us into the mystery of daily bread and the lilies of the economic field.

DADAIST SPONTANEITY

What I call the I-don't-give-a-damn attitude of life is when everyone minds his own business, at the same time as he knows how to respect other individualities, and even how to stand up for himself, the two-step becoming a national anthem, a junk shop, the wireless (the wire-less telephone) transmitting Bach fugues, illuminated advertisements for placards for brothels, the organ broadcasting carnations for God, all this at the same time, and in real terms, replacing photography and unilateral catechism.

Active simplicity.

The incapacity to distinguish between degrees of light: licking the twilight and floating in the huge mouth filled with honey and excrement. Measured against the scale of Eternity, every action is vain - (if we allow thought to have an adventure whose result would be infinitely grotesque - an important factor in the awareness of human incapacity). But if life is a bad joke, with neither goal nor initial accouchement, and because we believe we ought, like clean chrysanthemums, to make the best of a bad bargain, we have declared that the only basis of understanding is: art. It hasn't the importance that we, old hands at the spiritual, have been lavishing on it for centuries. Art does nobody any harm, and those who are capable of taking an interest in it will not only receive caresses, but also a marvellous chance to people the country of their conversation. Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist, and because at this moment I enjoy mixing this monster in oil paints: a paper tube imitating the metal that you press and automatically squeeze out hatred, cowardice and villainy. The artist, or the poet, rejoices in the venom of this mass condensed into one shopwalker of this trade, he is glad to be insulted, it proves his immutability. The author or the artist praised by the papers observes that his work has been understood: a miserable lining to a collaborating with the heat of an animal incubating the baser instincts. Flabby, insipid flesh multiplying itself with the aid of typographical microbes.

We have done violence to the snivelling tendencies in our natures. Every infiltration of this sort is macerated diarrhoea. To encourage this sort of art is to digest it. What we need are strong straightforward, precise works which will be forever misunderstood. Logic is a complication. Logic is always false. It draws the superficial threads of concepts and words towards illusory conclusions and centres. Its chains kill, an enormous myriapod that asphyxiates independence. If it were married to logic, art would be living in incest, engulfing, swallowing its own tail, which still belongs to its body, fornicating in itself, and temperament would become a nightmare tarred and feathered with protestantism, a monument, a mass of heavy, greyish intestines.

But suppleness, enthusiasm and even the joy of injustice, that little truth that we practise as innocents and that makes us beautiful: we are cunning, and our fingers are malleable and glide like the



branches of that insidious and almost liquid plant; this injustice is the indication of our soul, say the cynics. This is also a point of view; but all flowers aren't saints, luckily, and what is divine in us is the awakening of anti-human action. What we are talking about here is a paper flower for the buttonhole of gentlemen who frequent the ball of masked life, the kitchen of grace, our white, lithe or fleshy girl cousins. They make a profit out of what we have selected. The contradiction and unity of opposing poles at the same time may be true. IF we are absolutely determined to utter this platitude, the appendix of alibidinous, evil-smelling morality. Morals have an atrophying effect, like every other pestilential product of the intelligence. Being governed by morals and logic has made it impossible for us to be anything other than impassive towards policemen - the cause of slavery - putrid rats with whom the bourgeois are fed up to the teeth, and who have infected the only corridors of clear and clean glass that remained open to artists.

Every man must shout: there is great destructive, negative work to be done. To sweep, to clean. The cleanliness of the individual materialises after we've gone through folly, the aggressive, complete folly of a world left in the hands of bandits who have demolished and destroyed the centuries. With neither aim nor plan, without organisation: uncontrollable folly, decomposition. Those who are strong in word or in strength will survive, because they are quick to defend themselves; the agility of their limbs and feelings flames on their faceted flanks.

Morals have given rise to charity and pity, two dumplings that have grown like elephants, planets, which people call good. There is nothing good about them. Goodness is lucid, clear and resolute, and ruthless towards compromise and politics. Morality infuses chocolate into every man's veins. This task is not ordained by a supernatural force, but by a trust of ideas-merchants and academic monopolists. Sentimentality: seeing a group of bored and quarrelling men, they invented the calendar and wisdom as a remedy. By sticking labels on to things, the battle of the philosophers we let loose (money-grubbing, mean and meticulous weights and measures) and one understood once again that pity is a feeling, like diarrhoea in relation to disgust, that undermines health, the filthy carrion job of jeopardising the sun. I proclaim the opposition of all the cosmic faculties to that blennorrhoea of a putrid sun that issues from the factories of philosophical thought, the fight to the death, with all the resources of

DADAIST DISGUST

Every product of disgust that is capable of becoming a negation of the family is dada; DADA; acquaintance with all the means hitherto rejected by the sexual prudishness of easy compromise and good manners: DADA; abolition of logic, dance of those who are incapable of creation: DADA; every hierarchy and social equation established for values by our valets: DADA; every object, all objects, feelings and obscurities, every apparition and the precise shock of parallel lines, are means for the battle of: DADA; the abolition of memory: DADA; the abolition of archaeology: DADA the abolition of prophets: DADA; the abolition of the future: DADA; the absolute and indiscutable belief in every god that is an immediate product of spontaneity: DADA; the elegant and unprejudiced leap from on harmony to another sphere; the trajectory of a word, a cry, thrown into the air like an acoustic disc; to respect all individualities in their folly of the moment, whether serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, decided or enthusiastic; to strip one's church of every useless and unwieldy accessory; to spew out like a luminous cascade any offensive or loving thought, or to cherish it - with the lively satisfaction that it's all precisely the same thing - with the same intensity in the bush, which is free of insects for the blue-blooded, and gilded with the bodies of archangels, with one's soul. Liberty: DADA DADA DADA; - the roar of contorted pains, the interweaving of contraries and all contradictions, freaks and irrelevancies: LIFE.

* in 1916 at the CABARET VOLTAIRE in Zurich


copied from: http://www.391.org/manifestos/tristantzara_dadamanifesto.htm

Process Aesthetics, Eternal Networks, Ready-Made Everyday Actions, and Other Potentially Dangerous Drugs, Estera Milman

A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these "ready-mades" was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with a total absence of good or bad taste in fact a compete anesthesia.

I realized soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the production of "ready-mades" to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time that, for the spectator even more than for the artist, art is a habit-forming drug and I wanted to protect my "ready-mades" against such contamination.

- Marcel Duchamp [1]



In "An Introduction to Dada" originally published as an insert to Robert Motherwell's influential 1951 edition of The Dada Painters and Poets, Tristan Tzara presents a number of statements on the interrelationship posed between art and life that coincide, to an uncanny extent, with Robert Filliou's 1963 definition of the "Eternal Network." Tzara insists that participants in Dada "had repudiated all distinction between life and poetry" [2] and had determined that "the real aim of art (was) integration with the present-day world." [3] Although this posteriori reflection is specific to the actions of a World War I era avant-garde, it further corresponds to myriad mid-century artistic strategies that revolved around the so called "art/life dichotomy" including the environments and happenings of Allan Kaprow, the correspondence networks of Ray Johnson, Fluxus, the Nouveaux Réalistes, and Arte Povera. Furthermore, an expanding community of contemporary artists continues to rally around a banner dedicated to the inseparableness of art and life. Tzara explained that participants in Dada sought to integrate art with their present day world because "it seemed to us that literature and art had become institutions located on the margin of life." [4] However, despite the Dadaists' (and the Surrealists') attempts to dissolve distinctions between life and poetry, the institution of art's position within life did not shift closer to center. The proposed marriage lacked prerequisite reciprocity. Life, after all, did not ask to be integrated with art.


First and foremost, mail art networks are "cultures." In their pure, transitive state (that is to say, outside the museum, gallery, and alternative space system), correspondence works are overtly transactional; they serve as a means by which community itself is established and through which members of the culture interact. However, mail art networks differ from other communities through their self-determined classification as "art" cultures. As a result, participants in contemporary art networks, despite their successful repudiation of all distinction between receiver and art maker, have had little more success moving away from the margin of life than did their early twentieth-century precursors. That such is the case is dependent, to a certain extent, upon their unwillingness to liberate themselves from the myth that the aesthetic is exclusively dependent upon art and consequently upon the artist. Spectator/artist and artist/spectator remain mutually contaminated by a self-injected habit-forming drug.

In early 1913, Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912), a painting that made simultaneous reference to both Cubism and Futurism, was concurrently described as a masterpiece and an "explosion in a shingle factory." The painting was reproduced for sale in postcard form and featured as the sole illustration to appear on the menu for the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, Inc. March 8th's Beefsteak Dinner for their "friends and enemies of the press." Large crowds had regularly gathered around the work as it was exhibited; more often than not, these spectators were less interested in actively participating in an aesthetic situation than in a media event. "The rude descending a staircase (Rush hour at the subway)" and other caricatures of the painting had appeared in the press, and the American Art News had offered a price to the individual who could locate the nude in the School of Paris piece. [5] In short, Duchamp's Nude had become both symbol of modernity and unchallengeable popular hit of the International Exhibition of Modern Art mounted at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, an event that is credited as having served as the American public's tumultuous introduction to the amorphous construct, "twentieth-century European modernism."

It should be noted that the reception of Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 during the 1913 Armory Show was not an art situation that Duchamp orchestrated. Unlike his friend and colleague Francis Picabia, who traveled to America for the exhibition's opening and actively participated in a well-staged dialogue with the mass media, Duchamp's appropriation into the event was dependent upon chance. The show included four works by Marcel Duchamp, five by Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and nine by Jacques Villon. The press, having had its curiosity whetted by the thought of an European avant-garde family, chose to reproduce photographs of the brothers "at home" (that is to say, as they participated in everyday life) in popular Sunday supplements. The public responded well to the promotional prompt and the stage for the subsequent reaction to the painting was artfully set.

Duchamp would eventually become the master of the constructed art situation and of the art of allowing himself to be positioned by others. He would be appropriated by Tzara into Dada and later by André Breton into Surrealism and, although he would never become a card-carrying member of either movement, he would come to serve as paradigm for both. Furthermore, Duchamp would leave behind a legacy that continued to deeply affect our waning century and which, barring unforeseen circumstances, promises to continue its impact on the next. In fact one could easily go so far as to insist that it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the direction that the arts of our own period would have taken without his influence. He would serve as mentor to the composer John Cage (and through him to a new generation of artists including Ray Johnson, Allan Kaprow, and Dick Higgins); would deeply influence Merce Cunningham, Terry Atkinson and the Art-Language group, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg (the precursors to American Pop) and Claes Oldenburg, Richard Hamilton and the British Independent Group, Robert Morris and other Minimalists, the Situationist International, George Maciunas and other Fluxus people, among a host of others. I would posit that one cannot speak of eternal networks, process aesthetics, or any of the other art actions that maintain as their conceptual armature a purported insistence upon the inseparableness of art and life without hearing the echo of Duchamp's voice. It would be naive of us to assume, however, that he would have unconditionally approved of these contemporary manifestations of the Duchampian legacy. Aware of the danger of indiscriminate repetition, Duchamp "publicly" withdrew from the art world in 1923 (one decade after his triumph at the Armory Show) and devoted himself to chess.

Duchamp's overt references to chance procedure have left their indelible mark upon his disciples (for example, the integral role that chance plays in most forms of process art). His experiments with language have undeniably influenced contemporary artists working with performance scores, visual poetry/language works, concept art, etc., as has (at least on the surface) his insistence upon the hegemony of ideas over normative aesthetic titillation. However, it is through his invention/implementation of the concept of the ready-made that he most deeply affected the contemporary arts. That such is the case is ironic in view of the fact that the ready-made is probably the least well understood of Duchamp's transactional activities.

In 1913, the same year that his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 fortuitously became the pivotal symbol of the New York Armory Show, Duchamp fastened a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool in order to enjoy watching it turn and, a few months later, added green and red dots to the horizon of a commercial print of a winter landscape and retitled the resulting piece Pharmacy. In 1914, he purchased a bottle-rack based on his personal response of visual indifference to the object. Deliberately chosen in a state of "complete anesthesia," Bottle Rack fulfilled all requirements for what, in 1915, Duchamp would identify as the "ready-made." He would later distinguish between the ready-made, the ready-made-aided, and the reciprocal ready-made. In the process, Duchamp provided a potentially dangerous formula for succeeding generations of art makers who profess alliance to so-called non-heirarchical "new aesthetic media."

While it is true that Duchamp's ready-mades liberated art making from the re-presentation of nature at a point in time when the issue was of vital importance to the artists, the ready-mades were not about the aestheticization of everyday materials and mass produced objects. They served instead as initiators of art-centered situations-interactions that made direct reference to the fact that Art itself was a culturally specific, man-made construct. A brief discussion of Fountain (1917), one of Duchamp's most well-known ready-mades, and of its subsequent misinterpretation, will hopefully illustrate my contention.

In 1917, Duchamp anonymously submitted a urinal signed by one "R. Mutt" for inclusion in a supposed "unjuried" show mounted by the newly founded Society of Independent Artists in New York. Fountain was "shown" behind a curtain and Duchamp resigned in protest, having succeeded in testing the Society's charter. In 1963, Robert Morris produced an assemblage (which made use of everyday materials) in homage to Duchamp. One of Morris's historians writes:

In certain instances, Duchamp's objects provided a scenario for Morris's theatrical games. Fountain (1963), a play on Duchamp's readymade of a urinal placed on its back, consists of an ordinary galvanized steel bucket hung at eye level. Unlike Duchamp's inverted urinal, Morris's homage does not function as a static object [emphasis mine]; inside the bucket, and well above the viewers line of vision, water noisily circulates through a pump. What might have been a silent pun on modernist history instead becomes an endless performance piece, a kind of aural ballet mecanique. [6]
What is implied in the above statement is quite simply that through his use of artistic privilege, Duchamp "signed" an everyday static object and, in the process, magically transformed it into Art; whereas Morris surpassed his mentor by appending theatricality, performance, and temporality to the process. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While Morris' Fountain functioned comfortably within a pre-ordained, sanctified artistic space and was, from its inception, intended to maintain its objectness, Duchamp's ready-made was deliberately intended to serve as mere catalyst for a cultural interaction. To describe the 1917 Fountain as "a static object" is ludricrous, particularly in view of the fact that the piece was not completed until some time after Duchamp removed the urinal from the Society of Independent Artists' Exhibition. The "exhibition" of the object was but one increment in the collaborative event known as "the Richard Mutt Case." The specifics of how this particular art situation was activated are essential to our understanding of the piece. The event in question was the testing of the charter of the newly established Society of Independent Artists, a charter that Ducahmp himself had been instrumental in composing. The urinal merely activated the interaction.

They say any artist paying six dollars may exhibit. Mr. Richard Mutt sent in a fountain. Without discussion this article disappeared and was never exhibited. What were the grounds for refusing Mr. Mutt's fountain: 1. Some contended it was immoral, vulgar. 2. Others, it was plagiarism, a plain sheet of plumbing.

This statement appeared as the opening text of The Blind Man, No 2 (Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roche, and Beatrice Wood, eds., New York, May 1917) opposite a beautifully printed photograph of Fountain by Alfred Stieglitz. It was through the publication of the little review that the completed piece was realized. Thus, the event is a collaboration between the editors, Stieglitz and others who contributed to the issue. It should be noted that the editors of The Blind Man attempted to publish the little magazine without making use of editorial censorship (any article was to be accepted with a contribution of four dollars) [7] and that the issue devoted to "The Richard Mutt Case: Buddha of the Bathroom" was not "marketed" through "normal" channels but was distributed by hand.

Robert Morris' 1963 Fountain is housed in a private collection. Duchamp's 1917 version is no longer extant. (Having served its intended purpose, it quietly disappeared.) There are, however, a number of subsequent editions of the object scattered throughout numerous collections. It could be argued that the later versions lack the specific transactional characteristics of the original. Duchamp was aware of this and, in yet another attempt to short-circuit our assumptions about the institution of art, issued the facsimiles as part of his self-professed "whoring period."

In 1953, Duchamp organized the exhibition, Dada 1916-1923, at the Sidney Janis Gallery-in New York, and designed the exhibition catalogue which served as the poster for the show. It was printed on very thin paper and presented to the public at the opening as a crumpled ball of tissue. Included on the poster-exhibition catalogue is a manifesto by Tristan Tzara entitled "DADA vs ART" wherein the poet states:

Dada tried to destroy not so much art as the idea one had of art, breaking down its rigid borders, lowering its imaginary heights subjecting them to a dependence on a man, to his power humbling art; significantly making it take place and subordinating its value to pure movement which is also the movement of life.
Was not Art (with a capital A) taking a privileged, not to say tyrannical position on the ladder of values, a position which made it sever all connections with human contingencies?

In 1965, on a Fluxus broadside, George Maciunas, the movement's8 primary organizer, published a manifesto which attempted to distinguish between "ART" and "FLUXUS ART-AMUSEMENT."

ART
To justify artist's professional, parasitic and elite status in society, he must demonstrate artist's indispensability and exclusiveness, he must demonstrate the dependability of audience upon him, he must demonstrate that no one but the artist can do art.

Therefore, art must appear to be complex, pretentious, profound, serious, intellectual, inspired, skillful, significant, theatrical, it must appear to be valuable as commodity so as to provide the artist with an income.

To raise its value (artist's income and patrons' profit) art is made to appear rare, limited in quantity and therefore obtainable and accessible only to the social elite and institutions.

FLUXUS ART-AMUSEMENT

To establish artist's nonprofessional status in society, he must demonstrate artist's dispensability and inclusiveness, he must demonstrate the self-sufficiency of the audience, he must demonstrate that anything can be art and anyone can do it.

Therefore, art-amusement must be simple, amusing, unpretentious, concerned with insignificances, require no skill or countless rehearsals, have no commodity or institutional value.

The value of art amusement must be lowered by making it unlimited, mass-produced, obtainable by all and eventually produced by all.

Fluxus art amusement is the rear-guard without any pretension or urge to participate in the competition of "one-upmanship" with the avant-garde. It strives for the monostructural and nontheatrical qualities of simple natural event, as game or a gag. It is the fusion of Spike Jones, Vaudeville, gag, children's games and Duchamp.


Most participants in Fluxus insist that Maciunas' manifestoes present his own perspective and, thus, are not true "Fluxus Manifestoes." None of the Fluxus people signed the above. That such should be the case is based, in part, on the fact that the statement outlines a kind of self-destruct mechanism directed not only at Art (with a capital A), but also at the myth of artistic privilege. [9] In homage to the late and talented impresario of Fluxus (the movement that is credited as having served as direct progenitor of contemporary Eternal Networks) we should keep in mind that having purportedly liberated ourselves from hierarchical definitions of great Art, we run the risk of being left with little other than great Artists and famous "signatures." To do less would simply not be keeping it honest. In his "Dada Manifesto 1918" Tzara claimed that "morality is an injection of chocolate into the veins of all men." [10] So too is art, it would seem, at least for its makers.


NOTES



1. This essay first appeared in print in Eternal Network: A Mail Art Anthology, Chuck Welch, ed., Calgary, Alberta, Canada: University of Calgary Press, 1995. Marcel Duchamp, cited in Hans Richter, Dada Art and Anti-Art, London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1978, p. 89.

2. Tristan Tzara, "An Introduction Dada," in Robert Motherwell, The Dada Painters and Poets, Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 402.

3. Ibid., p. 405.

4. Ibid., p. 403.

5. For an in-depth discussion of the International Exhibition of Modern Art, see Milton W. Brown, The Story of the Armory Show, New York: the Joseph H. Hirschhorn Foundation, 1963. The winning entry for the American Art News' contest is entitled, "It's Only a Man" and is reproduced on p. 110.

6. Maurice Berger, Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s, New York: Harper & Row, 1989, p. 34. Despite his unfortunate misinterpretations of the transactional nature of Duchamp's ready-made, Berger's analysis of his subject is both intelligent and informed by the best intentions. In his introduction to the text, the author makes clear that his own perspective stands outside "formalism's aestheticization of the object." See "Introduction: Robert Morris Outside Art History," p. 5.

7. See "I Shock Myself': Excerpts from the Autobiography of Beatrice Wood," in Arts Magazine, Special Issue, New York Dada and the Arensberg Circle (May 1977), vol. 9, p. 136.

8. I am fully aware that surviving members of the Fluxus community insist that Fluxus was not a movement. Dick Higgins, for example, uses the term "tendency" in his attempts to distinguish Fluxus from earlier movements such as Dada and Surrealism. This is not a new strategy, however. In the late Teens and early Twenties, Tristan Tzara, Dada's primary impresario, professed a similar insistence that the World War I era movement was not a movement but a constellation of individuals. In fact, the term "tendency" appears in his "DADA vs ART" manifesto which was published in the 1953 Sidney Janis catalogue/poster:

It should be noted-and this is a trait common to all tendencies [emphasis mine] that the artistic means of expression lose, with Dada, their specific character. These means are interchangeable, they may be used in any form of art and moreover may employ incongruous elements, materials noble or looked down upon, verbal cliches, or cliches of old magazines, bromides, publicity slogans, refuse, etc. Tzara also makes reference to Duchamp's experiments with chance procedure and to his discovery of the ready-made in the manifesto.

9. It is important to note that few of Maciunas' co-participants in Fluxus would have defended Art's privileged and "tyrannical position on the ladder of values." Nonetheless, fewer still were able to liberate themselves from the assumption that the Artist's experience of the everyday is somehow more valuable, and thus deserving of attention, than similar experiences of "non-professionals."

10. Reproduced in Motherwell, p. 81.

above copied from: http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/atca/subjugated/one_3.htm

Dada Perfume: A Duchamp Interview, John Perreault

It has been a long time since we had one of our little conversations. They use to mean so much to me.

Marcel Duchamp: 1964? Bob Rauschenberg brought you by, thinking you could play chess.
JP: I can, but I hate it. Besides, I think it was Jill Johnston. I know it wasn't Jasper, because I never really knew him and I didn't meet John Cage until much later, actually, in the South Pacific. A lot has happened since I first met you.
MD: Particularly to me.
JP: We needn't go into that.
MD: It is kind of embarrassing. I used to say that what happened to me only happens to others.
JP: Not to belabor the point, but I remember that when I first met you, which was at the beginning of my career as an art critic, and the so-called end of my career as an artist, and almost the end of my career as a poet, you insisted that the true artist had no choice but to go underground. Now you are truly underground.
MD: Very amusing.
JP: Not as amusing as your last art work Given: 1. the waterfall. 2. the lighting gas.
Very few knew about that tableau until after it appeared at the Philadelphia Museum of Art among your other masterpieces.
MD: My gift to the art world.
JP: Why did you keep it a secret?
MD: As we have discussed in the past, secrets have been essential to my work, which may or may not have anything to do with art.
JP: I read in Calvin Tomkins' new biography — called simply Duchamp (Henry Holt, 1996)— that your brother-in-law Jean Crotti once said that how you used time was your real art work.
MD: Rather, it was how I abused time.
JP: For me your main contribution has been your secretiveness. And this inspired my own Secret Artworks. I'd say that that secrets are certainly a theme in your work. I think of the 1916 Readymade called With a Hidden Noise which is a ball of string with something inside of it that makes a noise when you shake it. What causes the noise? And the work, which I think is magnificent, is not Given itself — the barn door with peepholes and the nude and the waterfall beyond — but that it was kept a secret all the time you were working on it from 1946 to 1966 and beyond, until it was unveiled. Also, as I pointed out in print years ago, your output after the Bride Stripped Bare . . . when you were supposed to have given up art for chess has in retrospect proven not insignificant. Now when you look at the work, so much of which is at the Whitney now in Francis Naumann's exhibition called Making Mischief: Dada Invades New York, it looks as if you were quite busy between chess games. The work was always there, but invisible, somewhat like Poe's purloined letter in that famous short story: hidden but in plain sight.
MD: I always kept busy in a mental way.
JP: Was that mental activity art?
MD After a certain point I lost interest in making objects or pictures for sale. If you take away commerce and the prattle of critics, present company excepted, there is something left which may be art or something else.
JP: What is that something else? An idea? You have had an enormous influence on art that foregrounds an idea, on anti-object art, on process art, on post-modernism.
MD: No, not an idea. A rumor, a perfume.
JP: Yes. A perfume. You once said that art had a smell that only lasted thirty years. And in the interview I published in the East Village Other in 1965, I quoted you as saying that art left a scent behind, even when it was removed to another room, another state, another country.
MD: One of my many contradictory statements, so it must be true.
JP: Speaking of contradictions, does the current Whitney exhibition bring back memories? All your friends are there from the New York Dada period. The Countess, Man Ray, Beatrice Wood. Is there any art scent left in the objects, drawings, paintings, books?
MD: For me, none at all. All that work is dead. They have passed their thirty years. All the energy has been sucked out of them. I felt I was looking at work found in an Egyptian tomb.
JP: I had a different experience. You still come up as the king-pin, although most of your important work has always been on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art all of these years. On the whole, I think the show is worthwhile. You can see it, and save the train fare to Philadelphia.
MD: Nicely put.
JP: I did, however, like the seven paintings by your old friend John Covert, particularly the one of an apple and an apple cut in half. And the little collection of things by the Baroness Elsa Von Feytag-Loringhoven. It made me go and look up some of her poems.
MD: She was an inspiration to us all. She had absolutely no fear. Her costumes were her art. And I enjoyed the way she hunted down and tortured poor William Carlos Williams, who had somehow become the object of her lust. Hadn't you seen her or Covert's art before?
JP: Not that I can remember.
MD: There. That it explains why they were still alive to you. They not been seen as much as my works. They have not been drained of their energy by the public. That explains their present day perfume. Also I am sure you have guessed by now that the art perfume is sometimes mostly in the nose of the sniffer.
JP: True. I also liked the mock-up the Arensberg apartment, where so many salons were held, having never been there myself.
MD: I found it suffocating. But business is business. Let the legend linger.
JP: Can I dare to urge you to be even more personal?
MD: I hate being personal, but since I have long admired your avuncular, haphazard approach to art criticism, I will do my best.
JP: This is a dangerous question. Why did you marry Lydie Sarazin-Levassor? I have been reading about that in Calvin Tomkins' biography of you. I can understand your relationship with Mary Reynolds, and then your marriage to Teenie, but Lydia, whom you married in 1927, seemed totally unsuitable. She was overweight, uninterested in art, and not even very rich.
MD: Although it would have been very pleasant if she had been as rich as I first thought, I married her because she was indifferent to art. I now claim the marriage as an art work, a Happening, a Performance, very much ahead of its time. After all my masterpiece is called The Bride Stripped Bare by Bachelors, Even. My first marriage extended that theme.
JP: My next very personal question is also about money. We know you kept your expenses to a minimum. But isn't it true that you became a private art dealer?
MD: There were all these Brancusi sculptures floating around and this and that. One has to make a living. But also remember that for a long time I made some spending money by giving French lessons.
JP: And the Whitney exhibition? Is it true to the period?
MD: It is not for me to judge. For me, it is a collection of ghosts; cadavers on a slab; dead meat.
JP: Is there Dada now?
MD: The Dada we tried to create has not yet come into existence, probably cannot come into existence. This exhibition is not Dada, Tomkins' book is definitely not Dada. It might have been better to have added another floor showing fresh art, art with some surprise in it.
JP: The show is educational. It tries to capture a really wild period in American Art. I am not sure that Naumann's theory that New York Dada, as opposed to European Dada, is humorous, rather than witty. Tomkin points out that the French word you used, usually translated as "mind," in your famous statement that you wanted to put painting in the service of the mind, also means spirit, soul, vitality, character and wit.
MD: He's right.
JP: The exhibition inadvertently confirms your role as a catalyst. But beyond the time frame of the exhibition, it is now a commonplace that without you, and without Dada, there would be not Pop, Conceptual Art, and Post-Modern Art.
MD: I take no responsibility.
JP: Have you seen any new art that you like?
MD: I don't get around much any more.
JP: May I recommend an exhibition?
MD: Certainly. I am always interested in what other artists are doing, particularly when they are following up on my ideas.
JP: Just yesterday when I was opening my mail there was a large format newsprint poster picturing what I thought was your Fountain, the urinal you signed as a readymade in 1917. The poster said Saint Duchamp, and gave the address, which happened to me quite near where I live. How odd, I thought.
MD: And?
JP: It's a brightly lit store front painted stark white and directly in the window is a rack of novena candles, lit, and to the let a kind of kneeling device from a church with your Mona Lisa above it. Further inside: Nude Descending a Staircase, Fountain, Bottle-Rack, an unfinished Tu m', and the two-way door from Paris. At the rear, a door is open revealing a toilet with the lid up. The gallery was locked. Fortunately, I saw light pouring out of the open cellar door — it was early evening — and walked down the stairs. Inside was a man and three women sitting around, the walls covered with drawings of Fountain. I was recognized, and they offered to take off their clothes, because of the painting Alice Neel once did of me nude. I said that wouldn't be necessary. The man remembered that I had once had a studio in P.S. 122, which is untrue. But then again I recently discovered that there is a young poet in New Jersey using my name, or pretty close.
MD: Don't tell me. The man in the cellar was the notorious Mike Bidlo, who has made Jackson Pollock paintings and copied everything exactly. Even Andy Warhol.
JP: His best show yet. His name isn't even on the announcement. At the risk of adding inspiration to injury, I would like to add that eight of the sixteen objects by you in the Whitney are replicas, reproductions, reconstructions or latter-day editions. Bidlo's Duchamps might be seen as replicas of replicas.
MD: Well, I always said that a readymade had to consist of something of no aesthetic value and that is certainly true of my readymades. I think that Bidlo fellow is on to something...
JP: Are you still making art yourself?
MD: It is one of my bad habits. I am sure there will be more posthumous artworks surfacing.
JP: Finally, since the Whitney show focuses on New York Dada, what did New York mean to you and your artist friends?
MD: Freedom.
JP: What did Dada mean?
MD: Freedom.
Copyright ©1996 John Perreault & REVIEW All Rights Reserved

above copied from: http://plexus.org/review/perreault/dada.html

Jean Cocteau - Biography

For more information about Jean Cocteau, visit:
http://www.jeancocteau.net/

1889	Jean Cocteau, the son of Georges and Eugénie, is born on July 5th in Maisons-Laffitte. The couple already have two children: Marthe, born in 1877 and Paul, born in 1881.
1890 1897	The family lives with their maternal grandparents in a town house at 45 rue La Bruyère in Paris during the winter and at a property in Maisons-Laffitte during the summer. Jean is a pampered but nervous child. He has a capricious character and is often ill. He grows up in a mondain milieu where the arts are held in high esteem. His father draws and, at an early age, Jean starts to do the same. His grandfather is a collector and a music lover who organises musical sessions in the house. Fascinated by the theatre, Jean devours the specialist magazines he finds at home; he also attends several stage performances for children.
1898	On April 5th, for reasons that remain a mystery, his father puts a gun to his head and commits suicide. It takes until 1963, the year of his own death, for Cocteau to speak publicly of the tragedy on the TV documentary Portrait-souvenir.
1899	In the spring, grandmother Lecomte dies. The grandfather continues to live with his daughter. He looks after Jean and takes him to concerts at the Conservatory every Sunday.
1900	At the Universal Exhibition, Cocteau is awestruck by the dance performance given by Loïe Fuller. In August, he holidays in Switzerland. In October, after a period of primary schooling that by all accounts was below average and often interrupted by ill-health, he begins his first year in high school at the Petit Condorcet. His fellow students include Dargelos whom he will transform into a legendary character.
1901	He plays with his school friends in the cité Monthiers at 55 rue de Clichy (a location he will use in Blood of a Poet, Opium et Les enfants terribles (Children of the Game)). The death of an unidentified friend has a major impact on him. It is also a year in which he experiences the sudden revelation of beauty in a pupil and feels the "desire to be join those he finds beautiful rather than worry about being liked by them."" It is a sentiment he will later attribute to Jacques, the hero of the Grand Ecart (The Great Divide).
1902	In October, he begins his third year of high school at the Grand Condorcet. He excels in just three subjects: “drawing, gymnastics and German. His teachers find him intelligent but inconsistent, inattentive and restless.
1903	Jean travels to Châtel-Guyon and Venice with his mother.
1904	Jean is expelled from school at Easter due to his chronic absence. He completes the academic year by taking private lessons and in October he begins his fourth year of high school at the école Fénelon in rue du Général-Foy. He draws profusely.
1905	Jean is still enrolled at the école Fénelon. He spends the summer at the home of his friend Rocher in La Boissière, near Moy, in the Aisne.
1906	In April, grandfather Lecomte dies. With his friends Rocher and Boulant, the young Cocteau becomes an habitué of the café-cabaret Eldorado where Dranem and Mistinguett perform. During May and June, he has a brief affair with Jeanne Reynette, one of the cabaret's artists. In July, he fails his baccalaureate. We have no account other than his own regarding an incident in which he absconded to Marseille and his brother was dispatched to find him. To prepare him for his second attempt at the baccalaureate, his mother sends him to Val André and the home of Herman Dietz, a teacher at the lycée Buffon who takes boarders during the summer break. In October, Jean fails his baccalaureate again. He takes additional private lessons under the stewardship of Dietz in the rue Claude-Bernard.
1907	Mme. Cocteau leaves the house in Rue La Bruyère and moves to a smaller home at 62 Rue Malakoff (now called Avenue Henri-Poincaré) where she is able to maintain the lifestyle to which she is accustomed. Henceforth she lives alone with Jean. Jean, meanwhile, again fails to pass his baccalaureate despite another extended visit to the Dietz's in Val-André during August and September. He will not continue his studies. Instead, he writes poems, develops a passion for theatre and, no doubt due to the influence of De Max, persuades himself that a great future awaits him.
1908	His mother introduces him into society and he quickly earns a reputation as a dandy. He mixes with Catulle Mendès and makes friends with Lucien Daudet and Maurice Rostand. On April 4th, at the Théâtre Fémina on the Champs-Elysées, De Max organises a morning of poetry devoted to "a young 18-year-old poet, Jean Cocteau" with a presentation by Laurent Tailhade. The event is a great success in academic and literary circles. On May 12th, Cocteau attends the opening of the Salon des poètes and on July 15th publishes his first poem "Les Façades" in the review Je sais tout. In September, he travels to Italy with his mother: to Isola Madre on Lake Maggiore, then to Verona and Venice. On the 24th, while in Venice, his friend Raymond Laurent kills himself shortly after leaving Cocteau's company. Once again, Cocteau's youth is marked by death. Unbeknown to his mother, on his return to Paris he moves into a pied-à-terre in the gardens of the Hôtel Biron in Rue de Varenne. He has a brief affair with Christiane Mancini, a student at the Conservatory.
1909	Cocteau's literary activity is intense. In January, he works on plans for the magazine Schéhérazade with Maurice Rostand. Six issues will be published between November 1909 and March 1911. He also publishes articles and drawings in Comoedia. In February, his first anthology of poems, La Lampe d'Aladin (Aladdin's Lamp) is published. Following the Paris premiere of the Ballets Russes on May 19th, Misia Sert introduces him to Serge de Diaghilev. That summer, he is invited to the home of the Rostands in Arnaga in the Basque country. On November 20th, in Le Témoin he draws a caricature of the actress Madeleine Carlier with whom he has an affair and whom he introduces as his fiancée.
1910	Mme. Cocteau moves to 10 Rue d'Anjou, where she will live until the outbreak of war in 1939. Jean spends less and less time under his mother's roof. Even so, she continues to watch over him, intervening directly to end his relationship with Madeleine Carlier and to make him give up his lodgings in the Hôtel Biron. He is introduced into Madeleine Lemaire's salon by Lucien Daudet and Reynaldo Hahn. He meets Proust at the home of Mme. Straus, the widow of Bizet. He meets Jacques-Emile Blanche and François Mauriac. At the end of May, his second anthology of verse, Le Prince frivole (The Frivolous Prince) is published. In August, he travels to Clarens with André Paysan, a contributor at Schéhérazade. Together, they write La Patience de Pénélope, de Pénélope, mensonge en un acte (The Patience of Penelope, a lie in one act), with music by Reynaldo Hahn. More of Cocteau's articles and drawings are published in Comoedia.
1911	On February 14th, he meets the Comtesse de Noailles, whom he greatly admires. Whilst at the home of Mme. Simone in Trie la Ville, he also meets Alain Fournier and Péguy. At the same time, Diaghilev introduces him to Stravinsky. He spends Easter in Cap Martin with his mother, Mme Daudet and Lucien Daudet. The latter introduces him to the Empress Eugénie. He spends August with the Daudets at château de La Roche near Amboise. Throughout the year, he publishes articles and drawings in Comoedia, Comoedia illustré and Les Humoristes ; he writes the libretto for a ballet, Le Dieu bleu (Blue God) ; and he designs two playbills for Le Spectre de la rose He also writes "Ballet Russe", a text for the troupe's programme.
1912	In February, he poses at the home of Jacques-Emile Blanche, who paints his portrait. From March 12th to April 8th, he travels to Algeria with Lucien Daudet. On May 13th, Dieu bleu (Blue God), is performed by the Ballets Russes to music by Reynaldo Hahn. Karsavina and Nijinsky are among the dancers. However, the work is poorly received by the public - something that will greatly impact Cocteau. At the same time, Diaghilev issues Cocteau with his famous challenge: "Etonne-moi!" ("Astound me!""). At the end of June his third book of verse, La Danse de Sophocle (The Dance of Sophocles), is published. The judgement of the critics, together with the failure of his ballet and Diaghilev's comments, lead him to question the value and meaning of his early successes. A busy summer itinerary helps to distract him: he spends from August 8th to August 15th at the home of Jacques-Emile Blanche in Offranville where he meets Princesse Bibesco. The second half of August is spent at the château de La Roche with the Daudets, then in Saint-Jean-de-Luz with his mother and finally, in Cambo at the Rostands where he remains until the end of September. At the end of the year, the death of Henri Bouvelet, a contributor to Schéhérazade again leads him to anguish over the tragic destiny of certain young people. Some of his poems and prose appear in Comoedia, Le Figaro, La Revue de Paris, Je sais tout and Les Annales.
1913	In April and May, Cocteau stays at the Trianon-Palace Hotel in Versailles with Maurice Rostand. On May 29th, the premiere of Rite of Spring, enraptures him; the hostility shown by the public confirms his notion that artistic creativity can but be non-conformist. He works on a project with André Lhote to direct A Midsummer Night's Dream. From August 11th to September 16th and from October 7th to November 7th, he stays with Jacques-Emile Blanche in Offranville: he poses for another portrait and tries his hand at painting, surprising and disconcerting his host. On October 14th, he meets Gide for the first time. He begins work on what is to become Le Potomak and sketches his first Eugènes. On November 23rd, his article on Swann's Way, written at the instigation of Proust, is published in Excelsior. The same month, a mutual friend introduces him to Roland Garros. He takes his first flight in the company of the aviator, though the exact date of the flight remains uncertain.
1914	In January he visits Stravinsky, who is passing through Paris. He presents him with a project for a ballet - a music hall "parade" entitled David. However, reminded by Diaghilev of his previous commitments, Stravinsky will never complete the ballet. Back in Paris, Cocteau finishes Le Potomak. Though ruled unfit for military service, he does not wish to remain inactive when war is declared. At the beginning of August, he joins the Red Cross and is responsible for numerous humanitarian tasks. In September, he joins a convoy to evacuate the wounded from Champagne and witnesses the bombardment of Reims. Back in Paris, he visits Barrès: the discussions disappoint him. He prepares the journal Le Mot with Paul Iribe. The first issue appears on November 28th. He signs his drawings under the pseudonym of Jim. On the 26th, the military review board for the Department of the Seine designates him for auxiliary service. He volunteers for the Army's Ambulance Section, created by Etienne de Beaumont and leaves for the front in Flanders.
1915	In January, Le Mot becomes a weekly; its twentieth and last issue will be published in July. Cocteau meets Raoul de Castelnau who inspires him to create the character of Thomas the Imposter. On February 14th Le Figaro publishes his Hymne à Joffre on the front page. Cocteau begins writing the poem that will become Le Cap de Bonne-Espérance (Cape of Good Hope). Valentine Gross introduces him to the world of modern painting. He is called up for active duty on March 4th and is transferred on the 18th as backup to the 22nd section of clerical workers. On November 13th he is given a deferment to the Société française de secours aux blesses - an organisation to aid wounded servicemen - in rue François Ier. Whilst there, he is assigned to the ambulance service. On December 18th, he is sent as an ambulance man to a unit of marines at the front in Nieuport. The end of the year will prove decisive to his artistic direction. He meets Erik Satie at the home of Valentine Gross and launches the project for Parade. At the beginning of December, Varèse introduces him to Picasso.
1916	Cocteau spends the entire winter at the front in Yser. From the end of March to the beginning of April, he is on leave in Paris. Picasso introduces him to Montparnasse and, on May 1st, he paints Cocteau in uniform. The plans for Parade become clearer. Cocteau returns to the front from May 7th to May 30th and is on leave again in Boulogne-sur-Mer from June 1st to June 10th: whilst there, he meets up with Valentine Gross. On the 24th, he leaves Nieuport for another posting in Amiens. On July 29th, he returns to Paris definitively. In September, he is transferred to the French Foreign Ministry's department of propaganda. He is an active participant in the literary and artistic world. He socializes with Paul Morand and meets Bakst, Stravinsky, and Darius Milhaud… He writes one of three prefaces to the catalogue of the exhibition of French painting in Oslo during November and December. He contributes to the first exhibition of the association Lyre & Palette which is held in Montparnasse.
1917	Diaghilev decides to have the Ballets Russes perform Parade and he asks Massine to choreograph the work. From February 19th to April 9th, Cocteau and Picasso join the troupe of the Ballets Russes in Rome to help prepare the ballet. On March 10th and 11th, he visits Naples and Pompeii. The premiere of Parade takes place on May 18th at the Théâtre de Châtelet. The public and the critics are more surprised than scandalized by Satie’s music and Picasso’s sets and costumes. From August 17th to October 15th, he makes his first visit to Piquey in the Arcachon basin, with the Lhotes.
1918	Cocteau stays at the Croissets villa in Grasse until February 10th. Whilst there, he writes Le Coq et l'Arlequin (The Cock and Harlequin). Cendrars introduces him to the Editions de la Sirène created by Paul Laffitte at the end of 1917. On July 2nd, he is definitively discharged from military service. On July 12th, Cocteau, Apollinaire and Max Jacob, are witnesses to the marriage of Picasso and Olga Koklova. On August 7th, he and Satie are witnesses to the marriage of Jean Hugo and Valentine Gross. From July 15th to August 12th, he stays at the home of the Beaumonts in Paris before travelling to Piquey where he will remain until the beginning of October. On November 9th, Appolinaire dies: Cocteau sees himself as his spiritual heir. Dans le ciel de la patrie (In the Sky of the Homeland) is published. Le Cap de Bonne-Espérance (Cape of Good Hope) and Le Coq et l'Arlequin (The Cock and the Harlequin), though printed in December at the Editions de la Sirène will not go on sale until January.
1919	Cocteau’s Ode à Picasso (Ode to Picasso) is printed on February 9th. From March 31st to August 11th, the “Carte blanche” series is published in Paris-Midi. In it, Cocteau outlines his own particular aesthetic. In March, Aragon, Breton and Soupault launch their initially eclectic review Littérature. Despite his efforts to become involved in the publication, Cocteau finds himself sidelined. For a time, he strengthens his ties to the Dadaists and provides some poetry to the Anthologie Dada, which appears on May 15th. On May 20th, as Le Potomak is released, Gide publishes an open letter to Jean Cocteau in the N.R.F. in which he critiques Le Cap de Bonne-Espérance (Cape of Good Hope) and Parade. In the same article, Gide goes on to cite Le Coq et l’Arlequin (The Cock and the Harlequin) as evidence that the poet has no musical ability. Cocteau responds in the June/July issue of Les Ecrits nouveaux and Gide shoots back in the same review in October. For Cocteau, the acrimonious debate temporarily shuts the door to the N.R.F. On June 8th, Cocteau attends a special tribute to Apollinaire given at Léonce Rosenberg’s gallery “L’effort moderne”. Whilst there, he meets sixteen-year-old Raymond Radiguet.
1920	Cocteau becomes defender and spokesman of the young musicians who are quickly gaining notoriety as the "Group of Six". On Saturdays, he meets with the likes of Jean Hugo and Paul Morand at Gauclair, a restaurant on the Rue de Richelieu. On January 23rd, Cocteau attends the Dadaist rally; however, he breaks with the movement at the end of April after Tzara and Picabia dismiss his poetry. On February 21st, the premiere of Bœuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof) is performed by the Fratellinis, a trio of clowns. In March and April, he and Radiguet travel to Carqueiranne in the Var. La Noce massacre (The Wedding Massacre) is published in April; Poésies (1917-1920) is published in May together with the first issue of the review Le Coq which he edits with Radiguet (the fourth and final issue of that review will be published in November). He spends June and most of July in London with Darius Milhaud to fine-tune the English production of Bœuf sur le toit (Ox on the Roof) at the Coliseum. From August 10th to mid-October, Cocteau goes to Piquey. Radiguet joins him there. First, he writes Le Baron Lazare, a three-act play that will remain unpublished. Then, he and Radiguet co-write Paul & Virginie, a libretto intended for Satie. Finally, he creates Le Gendarme incompris, a sketch that Pierre Bertin will exhibit the following year. On December 9th, Picabia, with whom he has remained on good terms, opens an exhibition of Cocteau's work before an eclectic audience at La Cible in Rue Bonaparte: a "Parisian jazz" is performed by Auric, Poulenc and Cocteau. Cocteau, a fond admirer of American music, enthusiastically tries his hand at the drums and the trumpet. On December 21st, Parade is performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Cocteau reiterates that, despite his friendship for Tzara and Picabia he is not a Dadaist. At the end of December, Escales is published. The work is illustrated by André Lhote.
1921	At the beginning of the year, Darius Milhaud introduces Cocteau to Le Gaya, a bar on the Rue Duphot owned by Louis Moysès where pianist Jean Wiener plays jazz music. Cocteau makes it his preferred hangout in competition with Le Certà, where the Dadaists meet. On February 27th, Radiguet leaves for Carqueiranne. Cocteau, who is obliged to remain in Paris to prepare a production of the Mariés de la tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower Wedding Party) with the Swedish Ballet Company, joins him on March 16th. He and Radiguet remain in Carqueiranne until mid-April. Cocteau works on the Discours du grand sommeil (Discourse for the Big Sleep). On June 18th, the Mariés de la tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower Wedding Party) opens at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées; the Dadaists heckle the performance. He spends August and September in Piquey with Radiguet, who writes Le Diable au corps (Devil in the Flesh). Cocteau works on his bilan de l’esprit poétique (an assessment of the poetic mind), which the following year will become Le secret professionnel. In a clear sign that Radiguet’s influence has spurred a return to classicism, Cocteau picks up the theme again in two lectures given in Geneva and Lausanne on December 8th and 9th. During the Autumn, he starts work preparing adaptations of Antigone and Oedipus Rex.
1922	On January 10th, the bar Le Bœuf sur le toit, run by Moysès opens its doors on the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas. Cocteau hosts the soirées, Jean Wiener plays piano. A few days later, Radiguet runs off to Marseille and Corsica with Brancusi. On March 15th, Vocabulaire is printed. On May 13th, after making up with Radiguet, Cocteau travels with the latter to le Lavandou. A period of intense activity follows: Radiguet corrects the proofs of Diable au corps (Devil in the Flesh) and begins Le Bal du comte d'Orgel (The Ball of Count Orgel); Cocteau writes Le Grand Ecart (The Great Divide), Thomas l'Imposteur (Thomas the Impostor) and a series of poems that will eventually form the basis for Plein-chant. The dress rehearsal of Antigone takes place on December 20th. The performance, directed by Dullin and with music by Honegger is marked by further demonstrations from the Dadaists.

1923	In February, Cocteau spends a few days alone in Chantilly, at the Hôtel du Grand-Condé. In March, Le Diable au corps (Devil in the Flesh) is published. In April, Cocteau travels to London and Oxford with Radiguet. In the Autumn, Plein-chant, la Rose de François, and Picasso are released. In October, Le Grand écart (The Great Divide), and Thomas l'Imposteur (Thomas the Impostor) are published - a week apart. In late November, Radiguet takes up residence in the Hotel Foyot. On December 12th, for want of adequate medical supervision, he dies of typhoid. Devastated, Cocteau does not attend the funeral.
1924	In January, Diaghilev, Auric and Poulenc take a distraught Cocteau to Monte-Carlo. They urge him to find solace in opium. He works on plans for the ballet Le Train bleu. In February, in Paris, he meets Maurice Sachs for the first time. He works on preparations for Romeo & Juliet which is set to open at the Théâtre de la Cigale on June 2nd. Not only does he direct the play, he also plays Mercutio. Sachs too, appears in the cast. Le Train bleu has its premiere on June 20th with music by Darius Milhaud. Cocteau attends a performance of the ballet in London in December. At the end of June, a collection of drawings dedicated to Picasso goes on sale in bookstores. In July, Auric takes Cocteau, who is desperately seeking spiritual peace, to the home of the Maritains. The same month, on a visit to the home of Picasso, he discovers the name Heurtebise in a lift. It spurs him to write the poem L'Ange Heurtebise (The Angel Heurtbise). He leaves for Villefranche and the villa Le Calme where he will remain with Georges Auric and Marcelle Garros until November. He visits Picasso, the Hugos, and the Croissets. He also learns to drive.
1925	Poésie 1916-1923 is published in January. In February, Cocteau meets Jean Bourgoint and Bourgoint’s sister Jeanne. Their room will be his inspiration for the sets of the Enfants Terribles (Children of the Game). From March 15th to April 15th, at the Maritains’ urging he seeks treatment for opium addiction at the Clinique des Thermes Urbains in Rue Chateaubriand. He draws prolifically and writes poetry that will eventually be included in Opera. He convalescences in Versailles until May 11th. Cri écrit (Written Cries) is published. He spends from August to October at the Hotel Welcome in Villefranche; Georges Hugnet introduces him to Christian Bérard. A period of intense creativity ensues; Lettre à Maritain, Orpheus, Opéra, Oedipus Rex. Prière mutilée (Maimed Prayer) and l’Ange Heurtebise (The Angel Heurtbise) are all published in August. Cocteau starts writing to Jean Desbordes. The first volume of Maritain's "Le Roseau d'or" (The Golden Reed) on which Cocteau collaborated arrives in bookstores. At Christmas, Abbé Mugnier hears Cocteau's confession; Cocteau attends Midnight Mass and celebrates Christmas Eve at the Maritains.
1926	Having arrived at the Hotel Welcome in Villefranche on December 31st, Cocteau spends the entire year there making only brief trips to Paris. He writes Oedipus Rex for Stravinsky who, from mid-January works on the music. Disputes arise with the surrealists. Orpheus has its première on June 17th at the Théâtre des Arts. Cocteau spends the summer in Villefranche; Jean Desbordes, who has become a substitute for Radiguet, visits him. Le Rappel à l'ordre (The Call to Order), Romeo & Juliet and an album of drawings, Maison de santé (Nursing Home), are published. From December 10th to 28th, an exhibition of unusual objects and drawings entitled Poésie plastique (Sculpted poetry) is held at the Galerie des Quatre Chemins. Cocteau spends the end of December at the Hotel de la Madeleine on rue de Surène, probably with Jean Desbordes.
1927	In January, Cocteau goes to Montpellier and meets Yves Belaval, a young student with whom he has been corresponding. On May 30th, Stravinsky conducts the première of Oedipus Rex. Cocteau spends the summer with Desbordes in Chantilly, then on the Côte d'Azur. Orpheus and Opéra are published. On December 7th, Cocteau gives a lecture at the Université des Annales, on the theme of Orpheus and Oedipus. On December 16th, the opera Pauvre matelot (The Poor Sailor), premières with music by Darius Milhaud. Cocteau completes La voix humaine (The Human Voice) and writes Le Livre blanc (The White Book). On December 28th, the opera Antigone, premieres at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels with music by Honegger.
1928	Cocteau spends the winter with Desbordes at the Hotel Welcome in Villefranche. On his return to Paris, he stays in a hotel or with friends until Coco Chanel lends him an apartment on the Rue Cambon. Le Livre blanc (The White Book) (a print run is released without the author's name) outrages the Maritains. The Mystère laïc (The Secular Mystery) is published in July. In it, Cocteau defends De Chirico who is under attack form the surrealists. He spends the second half of August in the Vosges with Desbordes and the month of September in Villefranche with Chanel. At the end of November, he checks into a clinic in Saint-Cloud for a new bout of detoxification. Chanel covers the costs.
1929	Cocteau, who finds himself in the same clinic as Raymond Roussel, remains there until April when Chanel stops paying for the treatment. He draws, begins Opium and writes Les Enfants terribles (Children of the Game) in eighteen days. He makes his first public appearance on March 19th for a reading of La Voix humaine (The Human Voice) at the Comédie-Française. In April, he takes up residence in a Hotel on the Rue Bonaparte. He spends May with Desbordes -first in Villefranche then in Roquebrune. On June 4th in Paris, he, Gaston Gallimard, René Crevel and Marie Laurencin are witnesses to the marriage of Jouhandeau and Caryathis. In July, Les Enfants terribles (Children of the Game) is published; it is received favourably by the critics. He spends August and September with Desbordes in Roquebrune: the atmosphere is tense and punctuated by disputes. Desbordes finally walks out on Cocteau. That autumn, in Paris, the poet lives at the Madeleine-Hôtel-Palace. He records the poems of Opéra on disc. On December 11th, he attends the tenth anniversary concert for the Group of Six at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. On December 25th, Jeanne Bourgoint commits suicide. As a result, Cocteau and Auric go to Hyères to stay with the Noailles. Cocteau explores the idea of making a cartoon to be financed by Charles de Noailles.
1930	The dress rehearsal of La Voix humaine (The Human Voice) at the Comédie-Française provokes a hostile protest from Eluard. On April 15th, the filming of le Sang d'un poète (Blood of a Poet) gets underway. Shooting will continue until September. On June 4th, at the Théâtre Pigalle, Cantate is performed with music by Igor Markevitch and text by Cocteau. Cocteau spends August and September in Toulon with Desbordes and Bérard. There are numerous soirées at the Villa Blanche, home of the Bourdets. In December, Opium, journal d'une désintoxication (Opium, diary of a detoxification) appears in bookstores.
1931	On May 1st, Cocteau publishes an article in the N.R.F. on Les Tragédiens, the novel by Desbordes published the previous February. He spends the summer in Toulon with Bérard and Desbordes. However, at the end of August he contracts typhoid and is forced to spend forty days in a clinic, after which he convalesces with the Bourdets at Villa Blanche. He returns to Paris on November 15th and starts smoking opium again.
1932	On January 20th, le Sang d'un poète (Blood of a Poet) is screened at Vieux-Colombiers. Essai de critique indirecte (An Essay in Indirect Criticism) is published towards the end of April, followed by Morceaux choisis-Poèmes (Poems and Selected Pieces) in June. In the spring, at a screening of le Sang d'un poète (Blood of a Poet), he meets and subsequently has an affair with Natalie Paley (the niece of Tsar Alexander III, born in 1905). He leaves her in the Summer to join Desbordes in Saint-Mandrier. He completes La machine infernale (the Infernal Machine), a play he had started at the beginning of the year and which Jouvet opts to stage in December. He stays in touch with Natalie by letter. He reproaches her for aborting their child - something she will always deny. In the autumn, their relationship ends for good.
1933	Marcel Khill, whom Cocteau meets during the summer of 1932, becomes Cocteau's secretary. In November, the Fantôme de Marseille is published in the N.R.F. In December, Jean Desbordes leaves Cocteau definitively. The poet undergoes another bout of detox.
1934	On March 26th, Soixante dessins pour Les Enfants terribles (Sixty Sketches for Children of the Game) is printed. The dress rehearsal for la Machine infernale (The Infernal Machine) takes place at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées on April 9th. Cocteau plays the Voice and introduces Marcel Khill into the cast. He spends the summer in Villars-sur-Ollon with Marie-Laure de Noailles. In the autumn, he sketches and completes a new play, Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde (The Knights of The Round Table). He often sees Ramuz. Mythologie, illustrated by De Chirico is published. He befriends Louise de Vilmorin and leaves Rue Vignon for the Madeleine-Palace Hotel in the Place de la Madeleine.
1935	From January 19th to May 11th, "Portraits-souvenirs" is published in the Saturday edition of Le Figaro. The work will be issued in book form in January 1936. Cocteau spends the spring on the Côte d'Azur, first in Juan-les-Pins, then with Khill near Antibes; and finally, alone in Villefranche. He has difficulty working. In July, he sails with Khill aboard the Lancelot from Villefranche to Toulon for a story that will appear in Paris-Soir during August under the title "Rediscovering childhood". Back in Paris, he moves into the Hotel de Castille at 37 Rue Cambon. He spends the end of the year in Mas de Fourques at the home of Jean Hugo.
1936	From March 29th to June 17th, in response to a project proposed by Paris-Soir publisher Jean Prouvost, Cocteau and Khill follow the example of Jules Verne's hero and travel Around the World in 80 Days. A diary of their journey appears in Paris-Soir between August 1st and September 3rd and is published in book-form in early 1937 under the title Mon premier voyage (My First Voyage). Spurred on by Gide's intervention, Cocteau and Aragon reconcile their differences. The poet spends Christmas at the Château de Briacé.
1937	Cocteau finds the former world boxing champion Al Brown working as a musician in a cabaret. With the help of Chanel, Cocteau puts him through detox and brings him back to competitive boxing. March 2nd sees the start of "Articles de Paris" a joint project with Ce Soir. The column, which has no set theme, will run until June 1938. Whilst holding auditions for Oedipus Rex, Cocteau notices Jean Marais, a student of Raymond Rouleau. He ends up giving Marais a part in the chorus. The play's dress rehearsal is held at the Théâtre Antoine on July 12th. On September 9th, at the Salle Wagram, Al Brown steps back into the ring and triumphs by knocking out his opponent in the first round. He regains the title of world champion on March 4th 1938, then, on the advice of Cocteau, retires from boxing. On October 14th, Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde (The Knights of the Round Table) opens at the Théâtre de l'œuvre. Jean Marais plays Galahad. In December, Cocteau and Marcel Khill travel to Marseille and northern Italy. The Académie Mallarmé is founded the same month: Cocteau is immediately called to its service.
1938	Cocteau spends February in Montargis with Jean Marais. He writes Les Parents terribles (The Storm Within) in eight days. In April, Cocteau moves in with Jean Marais at 9 Place de la Madeleine. In July, he takes Marais to Toulon to stay with set designer Coula Roppa, an avid smoker of opium. Following a police raid at the home of their hostess, all three are charged with drug trafficking. Cocteau spends August at the Hotel du Soleil in Saint-Tropez then in Pramousquier. In September, he writes L'Incendie (The Fire) a poem dedicated to Marais. Les Parents terribles (The Storm Within) premieres at the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs on November 14th. A row with the Paris city council ensues and the latter tries to ban performances of the play.
1939	On January 4th, Les Parents terribles (The Storm Within) moves from the Ambassadeurs to the Bouffes-Parisiens. Audiences give the play and its actors (Jean Marais and Yvonne de Bray) a rapturous reception. On February 10th, the Toulon drug affair goes to court and Cocteau is convicted and ordered to pay a heavy fine. In March, Enigme is published. On April 8th, the poet takes an ailing Jean Marais to Piquey. Whilst there, Cocteau writes La Fin du Potomak (The End of Potomak). In May, at the Hotel du Parc in Versailles, he writes La Machine à écrire (The Typewriter) in five days. When war is declared on September 3rd he is in Saint-Tropez with Jean Marais. While the latter is mobilised, Cocteau remains with Chanel at the Ritz then aboard the Scarabée where he writes Les Monstres sacrés (The Holy Monsters). At Christmas, he visits Jean Marais in his unit.
1940	Les Monstres sacrés (Holy Monsters) premières at the Théâtre Michel on February 17th. The play then moves to the Bouffes-Parisiens. The show’s curtain-raiser is Le Bel indifferent (The Indifferent Lover) played by Edith Piaf. La fin du Potomak (End of Potomak) is published. Cocteau, who has been living in the Hotel du Beaujolais since his return to Paris, rents an apartment at 36 rue de Montpensier near the gardens of the Palais-Royal. It will be his last Paris address. In June, the Exodus leads him to Perpignan. He is joined there by a newly demobilised Jean Marais. Whilst there, Cocteau learns of the death of Marcel Khill. He returns to Paris in September. In December, he goes into detox for the last time.

1941	Despite publishing Allégories, an anthology of poems in June, Cocteau primarily focuses his attentions on the theatre. In February, he designs the sets and costumes for Feydeau's La main passe. On April 29th, the premiere of La Machine à écrire (The Typewriter) at the Théâtre Hébertot spurs virulent attacks from the collaborationist press: Rebatet and Laubreaux rage in the fascist-leaning Je suis partout. One evening in June, Jean Marais gives Laubreaux a good hiding. The play is banned. In July, an album of drawings linked to the Chevaliers de la Table ronde (Knights of the Round Table) is published. In August, it takes Cocteau just 18 days to write Renaud & Armide. In October, a revival of Les parents terribles (The Storm Within) at the Théâtre du Gymnase results in the play being banned. On December 7th, the ban is lifted and the play is received with loud applause. At the end of the year, Cocteau hires Paul Morihien as his secretary.
1942	On January 19th, the play Renaud & Armide is accepted by the Comédie-Française, but rejected by Jérôme Carcopino, the Vichy government's supervising Minister. Throughout the year, Cocteau meets frequently with Picasso, Eluard and Lise Deharme. He sees Ernst Jünger who is posted in Paris. Cocteau enters a period of intense cinematic activity: adaptation and dialogues for Marcel Lherbier's La Comédie du bonheur and dialogues for Roland Tual unhappy with Charles Spaak's screenplays for Lit à Colonnes. In early March, Cocteau begins writing a Journal. On May 15th, he attends the inauguration of an exhibition of his long-time friend, the German sculptor Arno Breker, at the Orangerie. On May 23rd, he publishes a "salute to Breker" in Comoedia and sparks intense criticism for doing so. He completes his screenplay for L'Eternel retour (The Eternal Return) and re-writes the Baron fantôme for Serge de Poligny.
1943	Mme. Cocteau dies on January 20th. On January 27th, Antigone triumphs at the Opera. Two days later, Cocteau holds a poetry recital with Serge Lifar at the Théâtre Edouard VII. On February 6th, Cocteau is filled with enthusiasm at a reading of Genet's Condamné à mort. On February 15th, he meets Genet. On April 14th, Renaud & Armide has its premiere at the Comédie-Française with Marie Bell, Mary Marquet, Maurice Escande and Jacques Dacquemine. The play is a huge success; however the collaborationist press continues to hound the author. On April 20th, Cocteau leaves for Nice for the filming of L'Eternel retour (The Eternal Return). Soon after his arrival, he develops a mild and easily-treated case of pneumonia. In August, he plays Musset in Sacha Guitry's film La Malibran. He works on a study on El Greco to be published at the end of the year as well as on a play that will become L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle Has Two Heads). On August 27th, Cocteau is attacked on the Champs-Elysées by members of a security force supervising a parade of French Volunteers who have enlisted to go to the Russian Front at the side of the Nazis. In October, L'Eternel retour (The Eternal Return) is screened in three cinemas. Jean Marais is a resounding success. Cocteau leaves with Marais and Paul Morihien for Tal Moor near Pont-Aven where they are guests of the Masson-Détourbets. Whilst there, Cocteau completes L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle Has Two Heads).
1944	He finishes Léone, a poem he has been working on since 1941. His project for La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) takes form. The death of Giraudoux on January 31st, and more particularly that of Max Jacob at the holding camp in Drancy on March 5th, deeply affects Cocteau who had made every effort to obtain the release of his friend. On April 12th, he turns down an offer to succeed Vaudoyer as director of the Comédie-Française. On June 10th, four days after the Allied landings in Normandy, he attends a lecture given by Sartre at la Loggia on the Quai Voltaire. The lecture is followed by a debate on Dramatic Style. In early July, Jean Desbordes' sister asks Cocteau to intervene to save her brother imprisoned for his activities in the Resistance. Cocteau tries but in vain: Jean Desbordes is executed on July 5th. After the liberation of Paris on August 25th, Jean Marais joins Leclerc's Free French division and on September 7th leaves for the front. From the end of August onwards, Cocteau's demeanour during the Occupation raises criticism. On November 23rd, he is summoned to appear before the collaborationist-purging Comité d'épuration du cinema. He is acquitted in minutes. He will also be acquitted when he appears before the Committee of Writers.
1945	January sees readings of Léone by Cocteau himself, of Plein-chant (Plainsong) by Maria Casarès, and L'Ange Heurtebise (The Angel Heurtebise) by Marcel Herrand. In April, the poet writes the last page of the Journal that he started in March 1942. He and Georges Hugnet start writing poems on the tablecloths of the restaurant Le Catalan. He writes the dialogue for Bresson's Dames du bois de Boulogne (Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne). La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) is filmed at Rochecorbon near Tours between August 26th and September 13th. The last reels are shot in the studio and at the Château de Raray near Senlis. Cocteau, who has suffered from hives and acute inflammation since early October is finally hospitalised at the Hôpital Pasteur. Whilst there, he writes La Crucifixion. He is released from the hospital on November 1st and starts filming again on November 6th. Though still afflicted with abscesses, he works until the end of the year. He keeps a journal of the filming, which will be published in January 1947 (La Belle et la Bête. Journal d'un film - Beauty and the Beast. Diary of a filming).
1946	Filming ends on January 11th and Cocteau begins the task of editing. On February 8th, Les Parents terribles (The Storm Within) is revived at the Théâtre du Gymnase. In mid-February, concerned that Cocteau may be suffering from jaundice, Darbon takes the poet to Morzine. Whilst there, Cocteau starts work on La Difficulté d'être (The Difficulty of Being). On June 25th, his ballet Le Jeune Homme et la Mort (The Young Man and Death) premieres at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées with Jean Babilée in the lead role. From July 25th to August 24th, Cocteau rests at the spa in La Rocheposay, Poitou. Jean Marais and the Vilmorins visit him. Whilst there, the poet writes Un ami dort (A Friend Sleeps) and works on the screenplay for Ruy Blas. In October, La Cruxifixion is published and the Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle has Two Heads) has its world premiere in Brussels. La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) opens in Paris at the Colisée and Madeleine cinemas. The film, overlooked at the Cannes Festival in September, is awarded the Louis-Delluc Prize in December. That same month, the first volume of Cocteau's complete works is published by éditions Marguerat; the eleventh and final volume will be released in March 1951. On December 22nd, L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle has Two Heads) is performed at the Théâtre Hébertot with Edwige Feuillère and Jean Marais in the leading roles.
1947	In January, Cocteau buys a house in Milly-la-Forêt with Jean Marais; they take up residence in November. Though he writes L'Impromptu du Palais-Royal in April and draws his series of Licornes (Unicorns) in July, the greater part of the poet's output during 1947 is cinema-based: in the spring, he follows the filming of Rossellini's adaptation of La Voix humaine (The Human Voice) starring Anna Magnani, then the filming of Ruy Blas and finally, in October, the filming of L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle has Two Heads). At the end of the year, he writes the screenplay for Orphée (Orpheus) and publishes La Difficulté d'être (The Difficulty of Being). In July, publisher Paul Morihien introduces him to Edouard Dermit, a young painter from Lorraine. Cocteau hires him as an assistant gardener at Milly and quickly makes him his chauffeur.
1948	Cinema remains Cocteau's primary focus throughout the year. Ruy Blas is released in February and L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle has Two Heads) in September. Les Parents terribles (The Storm Within) is shot during May and June and released in November. In September, he takes up tapestry and creates a cartoon of Judith & Holopherne. Poésie 1946-1947 is published, as well as a children's story, Drôle de ménage (Strange Household). At the end of December, Cocteau goes to New York to present L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle has Two Heads), just as he had done in London in June.
1949	Cocteau begins Lettre aux Américains (A Letter to the Americans) which will be published later that same year. From March 6th to May 24th, the stage productions of Les Parents terribles (The Storm Within), La Machine infernale (The Infernal Machine) and Les Monstres sacrés (Holy Monsters) go on tour to Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey. Jean Marais, Edouard Dermit, Yvonne de Bray and Gabrielle Dorziat are part of the troupe. A diary of the tour entitled Maalesh will be published in December. In May, the paperback compendium of his plays, Théâtre de poche, arrives in bookstores. During the summer, Cocteau adapts the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire and he organises the Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz. The filming of Orphée (Orpheus) gets underway in August and continues into November. By the time filming is complete Cocteau is left with a bad case of sciatica. In December, shooting begins on Melville's adaptation of Les Enfants terribles (Children of the Game). The poet meets 30-year-old Francine Weisweiller through Nicole Stéphane. An immediate and durable friendship begins. The year is also marked by the first official recognition of Cocteau and his works: on September 3rd, he is made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.
1950	On March 1st, Orphée (Orphée) is screened at the Cannes Film Festival prior to its release in Paris at the end of the same month. The film will go on to receive the International Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival in September. In Germany, Cocteau's presentation of the film is a huge success. In May, he makes his first visit to Santo Sospir, Francine Weisweiller's villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. The villa will become a third home to him. Whilst there, he sets about decorating the walls. The ballet Phèdre (Phaedra) for which Cocteau wrote the libretto and designed the sets and costumes premieres at the Paris Opera on June 14th. The ballet is choreographed by Lifar with music by Auric. In July, Cocteau takes the first steps to adopt Edouard Dermit - a process that will remain incomplete at his death. During the summer, the poet travels to Italy with Francine Weisweiller and Edouard Dermit. They make a stop at the Venice Film Festival. At the end of the year, he starts painting with an easel. He becomes a true celebrity and henceforth until his death he will be asked to preside over events, to write prefaces, to illustrate programmes and to design posters…

1951	At the beginning of the year, Cocteau records a series of radio interviews with André Fraigneau, including Entretiens autour du cinématographe - his interlocutions on the cinema. In April, he is elected president of the Union of Authors and Composers. He travels to Italy with Francine Weisweiller and Edouard Dermit, visiting Rome, Calabria and Sicily. In July, on Edouard Dermit's urging, Cocteau starts a new journal, Le Passé défini (Past Tense). In August, Dermit becomes Cocteau's sole legatee. Cocteau, who has painted profusely since the beginning of the year starts work on a new play - Bacchus. At the end of July, he returns to Santo Sospir. During the second half of August, he cruises to the Italian coast on board Francine Weisweiller's yacht, the Orphée II. From September 11th to 26th, Cocteau goes to Paris and then Milly before returning to Santo Sospir, where he stays until October 30th. Whilst there, he devotes time to painting, meets with Picasso on several occasions, works on Bacchus and prepares a new film - La Villa Santo Sospir. On December 23rd, Bacchus premieres at the Théâtre Marigny. In "A letter to Jean Cocteau" published in the December 29th edition of Le Figaro littéraire, François Mauriac attacks the play and accuses its author of blasphemy. On the 30th, Cocteau responds in France-Soir, with the article "Je t'accuse!" ("I Accuse You!").
1952	In January, on a tour of Germany, Cocteau visits Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Augsburg and Munich. He presents Orphée (Orpheus) and Villa Santo Sospir. An exhibition of his drawings, paintings and tapestries opens in Munich. In February, an exhausted Cocteau returns to Santo Sospir. He sees Colette and Matisse and writes Journal d'un inconnu (Hand of a Stranger). At the end of April, he returns to Paris and Milly to prepare for the première of Oedipus Rex at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. On opening night, Stravinsky conducts the orchestra but reactions to the work are mixed. From June 10th to July 1st, Cocteau travels to Greece with Francine Weisweiller and Edouard Dermit. He writes Le Chiffre sept (The Number Seven). In September, an exhibition of his graphic works opens in Berlin. He visits Arno Breker. Le Chiffre sept is published.
1953	An exhibition of his paintings, drawings and tapestries opens at the galerie des Ponchettes in Nice. During the second half of March, Cocteau gives a series of lectures in Turin, Genoa, Milan and Rome. Francine Weisweiller and Dermit accompany him. In April, he goes to Cannes for the Film Festival. As president of the jury, he must attend every screening. Appogiatures is published. On May 9th, Cocteau goes to Munich for the debut performance of the ballet La Dame à la licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn). On May 27th he goes to Rome for an exhibition of Picasso's works. He spends the intervening period at Milly and Paris. He returns to Santo Sospir in June and spends the month of July in Spain with the Weisweillers and Edouard Dermit. They visit Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo, Malaga, Torremolinos, Grenada and Gibraltar. Cocteau attends numerous corridas and meets Manolete and Dominguin. He also discovers flamenco. During September and October, he works on poems that will be included in Clair-obscur (Twilight). He writes a presentation for the concert by the Six and attends the performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. He leaves for Madrid for the Spanish opening of the film Orphée (Orpheus). He meets Dali.
1954	Cocteau spends the first half of January in Milly and Paris where he has numerous appointments on the radio and at the theatre. He spends a few days in Santo Sospir then, during February and March, he goes to Kitzbühl, Austria to rest. From March 18th to April 9th, he goes to Cannes for the Film Festival where again he is president of the jury. From April 28th to May 9th, Cocteau travels to Madrid and Seville and attends several corridas. On his return to Paris and Milly, he works on the Corrida du 1er mai (The Corrida of the 1st of May). On June 10th, Cocteau suffers a myocardial infarction. He is hospitalised until July 16th. He convalesces at Santo Sospir where he paints and corrects the proofs of Clair-obscur (Twilight) which will be published at the end of October. He takes an interest in flying saucers and extraterrestrials. In November, he returns to Paris and Milly. He learns the techniques of pastel.
1955	On January 11th he is elected to Belgium's Royal Academy of French Language and Literature. On March 3rd, Cocteau is elected to succeed Jérôme Tharaud at the Académie française in the first round of voting. His induction takes place on October 20th and it is André Maurois who responds to his speech. Cocteau is in Paris during February for an exhibition of his pastels at the Galerie Lucien Weill in Rue Bonaparte. He then goes to Saint-Moritz with Francine Weisweiller. In May, an exhibition of 180 of his pastels opens in Rome. He again spends the summer at Santo Sospir.
1956	In March, Cocteau goes to Brussels for a new production of La Machine à écrire (The Typewriter). The production will later be performed at the Comédie-Française. He begins the task of decorating the chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche. In April, Poèmes 1916-1955 - a new anthology of his poetry - is published. On June 12th he is made a Doctor honoris causa of Oxford University. On his return to Paris, he records Les Entretiens sur le musée de Dresde (Discussions on the Museum of Dresden) with Aragon. The recordings will be released the following year. He returns to Santo Sospir where he remains until early November. From September 27th to October 31st an exhibition of his photographs entitled Images de Jean Cocteau goes on show at the Galerie Henri Matarasso in Nice. An album of the exhibition is published. Cocteau continues decorating the Chapelle Saint-Pierre and agrees to decorate the registry office at Menton Town Hall. At the end of November, he returns to Paris and Milly for a month. He spends Christmas at Santo Sospir.
1957	Cocteau finishes decorating the chapelle Saint-Pierre. He learns to make pottery at the Madeline-Jolly studio in Villefranche. A period of new poetic research results in Paraprosodies. He attends bullfights in Nîmes and in Arles with Picasso.
1958	Cocteau's sister Marthe dies on January 13th. At Santo Sospir, he works on Testament d'Orphée (Testament of Orpheus) despite the difficulties finding financing for the project. Paraprosodies précédées de 7 dialogues (Para-prosodies preceded by 7 dialogues) is published. He travels to Rome in mid-April, Paris in early June, then to Vienna for a production of Oedipus Rex, conducted by Karajan. In July, he goes to Venice with Edouard Dermit and Francine Weisweiller. Whilst there, he takes a training course at a Murano glass factory. He returns to Paris for the November 14th opening of an exhibition of his pottery at the Galerie Lucie Weill. At the end of December, he returns to Santo Sospir.
1959	During rehearsals for a production of La Voix humaine (The Human Voice) in Nice, Cocteau contracts haemoptysis and is ordered to rest. As a result, he is unable to attend performances of the ballet La Dame à la licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn) at the Paris Opera, and La Voix humaine (The Human Voice) with Denise Duval at the Opéra-Comique. He starts to write Le Requiem in bed. Poésie critique I (Critical Poetry I) and Gondole des morts (Gondola of the Dead) are published. He spends a period of convalescence in Saint-Moritz before returning to Paris for Edouard Dermit's first exhibition of paintings at the Galerie Montmorency. Back in Milly, he embarks on a project to decorate the Chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples. He then returns to Santo Sospir until early July. In September, he begins shooting Testament d'Orphée (Testament of Orpheus) first in Les Baux-de-Provence then in Nice. On November 4th, he plays the role of narrator in the London production of Oedipus Rex. The performance is conducted by Stravinsky. He remains in London to decorate the church of Notre-Dame-de-France. He returns to Milly on November 21st and spends Christmas and New Year at Santo Sospir.
1960	A second volume of critical poetry - Poésie critique II- is published. On February 10th, Le Testament d'Orphée (Testament of Orpheus) is screened in Paris. Cocteau travels to Saint-Moritz. On April 23rd, the chapel in Milly is inaugurated, followed on May 6th by the church in London. In June, Cocteau is elected to succeed Paul Fort as prince of poets - an event that sparks a rancorous debate that will last throughout the summer and only be diffused when Aragon publicly supports Cocteau's appointment in the October 20th issue of Les Lettres françaises. He spends July and August in Spain with Edouard Dermit, Dermit's sister Emilienne, Francine Weisweiller and her daughter Carole. On July 31st, he attends a bullfight featuring Dominguin in Cordoba. On October 3rd, Jérôme Killty's play Cher menteur (Dear Liar) which was adapted by Cocteau premieres at the Athénée. After a trip to Sweden he visits Warsaw to present Le Testament d'Orphée (Testament of Orpheus). During November and December, an exhibition of his complete graphic works is held at the musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy. He spends the second half of December in Santo Sospir.
1961	In January and February, Jean Delannoy directs La Princesse de Clèves (Princess of Cleves). The shooting script for the film was written by Cocteau in 1944. At around the same time, the poet begins the Innamorati, a series of sketches in coloured pencil. Le Cérémonial espagnol du phénix (The Spanish Ceremonial of the Phoenix) and La Partie d'échecs (The Chess Game) are both published. On March 1st, Cocteau is promoted to the rank of Commander of the Légion d'honneur. He spends April and May in Marbella. He writes Le Cordon ombilical (The Umbilical Cord) and completes six panels which he paints with rollers. From the beginning of August to the end of September, he makes a second trip to Marbella. The rest of his time is spent between Paris, Milly and Santo Sospir. He works on Requiem and at the end of the year he edits a second version of L'Impromptu du Palais-Royal. On December 3rd, his brother Paul dies.
1962	Despite his failing health, Cocteau's workload remains intense. In January, he spends a few days in Munich to present L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle has Two Heads). In March, he follows the rehearsals of L'Impromptu du Palais-Royal which will have its première in Tokyo on May 1st. At the same time an exhibition in his honour opens in the Japanese capital. At the end of the month, Requiem is published. He spends from June to September in Santo Sospir. Whilst there, he decorates the open-air theatre in Cap-d'Ail. On August 16th, he attends a bullfight in Fréjus with Picasso. In September, he travels to Metz where he makes 12 stained glass windows. He also designs the sets and costumes for the revival of Pelléas & Mélisande in Barcelona in February 1963. During the first week of October, Cocteau goes to Vevey to record L'Histoire du soldat with Markevitch. He spends the end of the year between Milly and Santo Sospir. Picasso 1916-1961 is published featuring 24 lithographs by the painter.
1963	Cocteau spends January and February in Paris and Milly. Arno Breker visits him and sculpts busts of both him and Jean Marais. Soon after, Cocteau returns to Santo Sospir. Soon after, following a quarrel with Francine Weisweiller, he will leave the villa and never return. In April, he records Portrait souvenir for television in Milly. On April 22nd, he suffers another, more serious heart attack and is hospitalised. He convalesces at the home of Jean Marais in Marnes-la-Coquette. He is unable to attend performances of L'Impromptu du Palais-Royal at the Comédie-Française and Pelléas & Mélisande at the Opéra-Comique, which features his sets and costumes. He returns to Milly on July 5th. On October 11th, one hour after learning of Edith Piaf's death, Jean Cocteau passes away. His body is embalmed on the 12th and laid to rest in Saint-Blaise-hors-les-Murs in Milly on the 16th. On April 24th 1964, his remains are transferred inside the church.

The above copied from:
http://www.jeancocteau.net/bio1_en.html