Jean COCTEAU (1889-1963) - Lot 24

Contact & Information :

Diane CHAPEL

Auctioneer

d.chapel@etudemorand.com

Telephone: + 33 (0)1 40 56 91 96 / +33 (0)6 75 45 84 12

Friday, October 11, 2024 from 2:00 pm

Online sale

SALES CHARGE: 28.80% INCL. TAX

To participate :

- Mandatory registration on Drouot Online (Access to lot display upon registration).

Special conditions:

Collection of lots by appointment from Friday, October 18, 2024, in Paris 75015 (Métro Sèvres-Lecourbe).

[The exact address will be communicated to you after full payment of the slip, when the appointment is made].

We offer delivery and shipping solutions on quotation, if you are unable to move.

Presentation of the sale :

Madame L.'s collection is an ideal itinerary for celebrating the ceramic and graphic art of Jean Cocteau.

A former gallery owner who ran the "Institut d'Orphée" on rue d'Ormesson in the 4th arrondissement from 1977 to 1981, Madame L. discovered the art of Jean Cocteau in the late 1950s thanks to her husband Michel. L, a painter and poet. Fascinated by the artist's work, she embarked on a collection, acquiring eight ceramics from Marie-Madeleine Jolly and Philippe Madeline in 1958.

Between July and August 1977, the gallery, whose name pays tribute to the spirit of Cocteau, organizes an exhibition in Le Touquet " under the sign of Zen and celebration ", bringing together a collection of pottery, photographs and texts relating to the artists Georges Mathieu, Raymond Moretti and Jean Cocteau. On this occasion, dishes such as "Les quatre profils" (Lot no. 18) were presented, as well as posters and lithographs such as "Innamorati" (Lot no. 23).

While the couple were unfortunately never able to meet Jean Cocteau, their interest in the artist led them to befriend and socialize with a number of personalities who had been part of his close circle, including Arles writer Jean-Marie Magnan (1929-2020), photographer Lucien Clergue (1934-2014) and above all Edouard Dermit (1925-1995), Cocteau's adopted son.

Coherent and diversified, this collection brings together graphic works, books and a remarkable group of eight original ceramics created by Jean Cocteau and Atelier Madeline-Jolly, including the sculptural vase "Grand chêvre-cou" (Lot no. 24), a powerful work in a "new style capable of producing a shock" in the words of Jean Cocteau, and the dish "Les Trois yeux" (Lot no. 8), Picasso's favorite ceramic piece.

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"Only the greatest men understand their time: you understood yours at the same time as you created it".

Max Jacob, [Letter to Cocteau], March 8, 1926

Too well known and therefore unrecognized, recognition of Jean Cocteau's art has gradually become veiled behind the mask of his celebrity. But make no mistake, no matter how familiar, even popular, his name may be, Jean Cocteau remains a prolific artist and witness to a century of which he is often the forerunner.

A jack-of-all-trades par excellence, Cocteau was a poet, filmmaker, novelist, choreographer, playwright, photographer, draughtsman and musician.

In this, Cocteau resolutely asserts himself as a great modernist, by not hierarchizing the acts of drawing, writing or filming.

***

"He was surely the Grand Master of the Line. It's impossible not to be captivated by his balanced graphic style, rigorous without being geometric, tender without being mawkish.

Philippe Madeline-Jolly

Jean Cocteau distinguished himself as an outstanding draughtsman and engraver, using his pure, easy line and inimitable grace to reinvent a unique type that has become iconic: the neo-Greek male face in profile.

Through his many graphic creations, the artist delivers a body of work entirely dedicated to poetry, drawing inspiration from antiquity, constellations, modernity and dreams, constantly sailing from one shore to the other.

***

"Picasso told me that if I put a ceramic in the kiln, I'd be lost. But I've always enjoyed getting lost [...]".

After experimenting with plates in 1953, Jean Cocteau met professional ceramists Philippe Madeline and Marie-Madeleine Jolly four years later, and became their apprentice at the age of 68. Little by little, he threw himself passionately into working with clay, proposing designs and using his genius and creative power to revolutionize the techniques previously used by the potters. Thus, from the end of 1957 until his death in 1963, over 300 pieces of pottery were produced in the Villefranche sur Mer workshop, the result of a fruitful collaboration between the mastery of brilliant technicians and the imagination of Jean Cocteau.