Coming to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection a major retrospective on Jean Cocteau

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection welcomes from April 13 to September 16, 2024 the major retrospective Jean Cocteau. The Juggler’s Revenge dedicated to Jean Cocteau (Maisons-Laffitte, 1889 - Milly-la-Forêt, 1963), curated by Kenneth E. Silver, an expert on the French artist and art historian at New York University.

The exhibition aims to focus attention on the versatility-or juggling dexterity-that has always characterized Cocteau’s art and for which the artist was often criticized by his contemporaries. Through more than one hundred and fifty works, from drawings to graphic works, jewelry to tapestries, historical documents, books, magazines, photographs, documentaries and films directed by Cocteau himself, from prestigious international museums such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Nouveau Muséand National de Monaco, the Musée Jean Cocteau, Collection Séverin Wunderman in Menton, as well as important private collections, including the Cartier Collection, the exhibition aims to trace the development of the multifaceted artist ’s aesthetic and retrace the main moments of his career.

Among the most influential figures of the twentieth century, Jean Cocteau was a great creator: he called himself a poet, but also a novelist, playwright and critic, wrote texts on art and music, and adopted various narrative forms, including travel writings and memoirs. However, Cocteau was also a brilliant visual artist, skillful, innovative, and capable of original approaches, and it is on this latter aspect that the exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection intends to focus, namely on Cocteau the draughtsman, graphic designer, fashion, jewelry, textile designer, and filmmaker. His versatility as well as experimentation left an indelible mark on twentieth-century art.

A key figure in the Paris art scene of the time, artists such as Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Sergej Djagilev, Edith Piaf, Pablo Picasso, and Tristan Tzara revolved around him. The affirmation of his sexuality and addiction to opium, of which he never made a secret, are the primary reasons for his precarious position within the contemporary avant-garde milieu. A man of the French establishment, yet so subversive to it, Cocteau embodied the cultural, social and political contradictions of his era.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog, published by Marsilio Arte, with essays by curator Kenneth E. Silver and Blake Oetting.
The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Cartier, Main sponsor.

Image: Philippe Halsman, Jean Cocteau, New York, 1949 © Philippe Halsman / Magnum Photos

Coming to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection a major retrospective on Jean Cocteau

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