Chloë Cassens, consultant of the Jean Cocteau Museum, is just not a lot a time machine as a time collapser. Once I speak to her about Cocteau—the French poet, playwright and movie director, who was one of many foremost avant-garde artists of the twentieth century—individuals lengthy lifeless shimmer with renewed vibrancy. Dramas between Cocteau and his lovers (like Jean Marais), associates (like Coco Chanel) and enemies (like André Breton) really feel as juicy and pressing as these on the quilt of Folks journal. That’s as a result of 31-year-old Cassens speaks with an artwork historian’s fastidious consideration to element and with a ardour that communicates her love of Cocteau and his time interval in Paris.
For individuals who aren’t accustomed to Cocteau, the artist left house at age 15, printed his first e-book of poetry at age 19 and have become related to writers like Marcel Proust in his early 20s. He would go on to publish twenty-three books of poetry, 5 novels and twenty-two performs, make eleven movies and collaborate with quite a few writers, artists, dancers and composers, together with Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Guillaume Apollinaire and Eric Satie. Nonetheless, it was a drawing of iconic Cocteau character Dargelos that caught the attention of 19-year-old Holocaust survivor Séverin Wunderman—a person who would later invent the style watch and amass the most important assortment of Cocteau artworks on this planet.
As a scholar of historical past and an educator, Cassens is conscious about the stakes surrounding Cocteau’s legacy. Cocteau was labeled a degenerate artist by the Nazis who occupied Paris within the early Nineteen Forties. He was an brazenly homosexual man, which additional made him a goal. Historical past, as we’re coming to know, is just not linear however round—or, maybe, spiracular. With nationalism on the rise all over the place, coupled with the creation of racially motivated detention facilities and the revocation of queer rights, there’s a lot to be discovered from how artists like Cocteau survived fascism—in addition to a lot to be misplaced when such tales get left behind. Observer spoke to Cassens about erasure, cultural revisionism and why sitting with discomfort is so necessary.
It looks as if missed girls and queer surrealists are getting some consideration now. A bit by feminine surrealist Dorothea Tanning offered for a record-breaking $2.3 million at Christie’s final Might. Why do you suppose that’s?
The centennial of Surrealism was celebrated final October. And as with every massive anniversary, individuals are likely to go, okay, what do we all know now that we didn’t know then? That’s significantly true with the Surrealists, as a result of right this moment we are able to look again on André Breton—the anniversary was actually of Breton’s manifesto—and acknowledge that man was violent. He was a misogynist. He was racist. He was homophobic. Cocteau was not an official Surrealist partially as a result of he didn’t need to be related to a set motion, but in addition as a result of Breton absolutely hated his guts. We’re reassessing a lot, even from the late Nineties and early 2000s, about who was left behind and the way we are able to carry them into their rightful place in tradition.
What do you suppose it takes to revise historical past? How do you—as a consultant of the Séverin Wunderman Assortment—contribute to that revisionist historical past? And the way have you learnt it’s working?
I’m continually writing, lecturing, talking and preaching. I can’t inform you what number of occasions I’ll ask somebody: Are you accustomed to the best works of Jean Cocteau? I generally really feel like that line Woman Gaga gave again and again in the course of the A Star is Born press tour, “There’s 100 individuals within the room and 99 don’t consider in you, however one individual believes in you and that’s all that issues.” However within the artwork world, issues function on a extra prolonged timeline. A Dorothea Tanning portray, promoting at a report worth not that way back, is nice. Let’s hope the sample continues for feminine surrealists, previous and current. I feel it’ll be extra evident in two, 5, ten or twenty years, seeing what number of museum retrospectives they’re getting.
Proper. Is an public sale report indicative of a real cultural shift, or—
Or is it lip service? It’s only a ready recreation. I’m optimistic. Lately, I went to the opening reception for 2 reveals on the Getty: “$3 Invoice: Proof of Queer Lives” and “Queer Lens.” They usually’re each so monumental, and Jean Cocteau is basically current, through a portrait of him in “Queer Lens” and his drawings and authentic books in “$3 Invoice,” which was actually stunning. I don’t suppose there’s been this a lot Cocteau in a museum present in California ever. After which there’s “Queer Lens,” which is all images from the early-mid 1800s via right this moment—I discovered a lot from that exhibit. Eadweard Muybridge, who invented the movement image, recorded a movie of two girls kissing. And it’s thought of to be the primary movie of individuals kissing in any respect.
Oh, wow.
I had no concept. There have been photographs of individuals in drag way back to 1850, which isn’t stunning. On the identical time, there’s something to be stated in regards to the timing of those reveals being opened now that LGBTQ+ rights are so in danger within the U.S.
What do you’re feeling are the stakes of being the consultant of the Jean Cocteau Museum?
I feel the stakes are fairly excessive. There are such a lot of individuals in Cocteau’s orbit who, in his time, had been the most important deal, and right this moment, a Google search comes up with little to nothing about them. For those who don’t proceed to put in writing the historical past and hold his title in individuals’s mouths, it should fade away. That form of erasure, whether or not acutely aware or via a form of atrophy, permits for what’s taking place now to occur at a extra accelerated tempo. Like the place individuals suppose trans individuals have by no means existed, so we are able to legislate them out of existence. For those who research historical past, you realize that that’s simply not true.
Are you able to describe your grandfather, Séverin Wunderman, and the way he got here to amass the most important Cocteau assortment on this planet? And why Cocteau?
That’s the query of my life: why Cocteau? I’ve a special reply relying on the day. However my grandfather survived the Holocaust. He was a hidden little one. He made his title and fortune by inventing the style watch, which he made with Gucci. He based and owned the license and the manufacturing for Gucci timepieces, which within the mid-to-late Nineteen Seventies via the mid-Nineties, stored Gucci afloat financially. Together with his earnings, from the time he was 19 years outdated and had no cash via to when he died in 2008, my grandfather was utterly obsessive about Cocteau. He purchased his first Cocteau piece when he was simply a young person; he noticed it in a store window and didn’t know what it was, he simply actually favored it and needed to have it. He spent every week’s wages on it. Over time, as he earned more cash and was extra profitable and had extra entry to the artwork world, he was capable of amass this large assortment of Cocteau and likewise artworks by his contemporaries. By the tip of my grandfather’s life, he donated an enormous share of the gathering again to France, like 85 to 90 % of it. And France constructed the official Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton for it. So far as why Cocteau, I feel my grandfather was simply actually drawn to magnificence in artwork, in style, in girls and generally. Cocteau’s work, even when it’s difficult, may be very stunning.
Coco Chanel was a giant supporter of Cocteau’s. Was there any relationship between Coco and your grandfather?
It’s humorous, my grandfather by no means met Jean Cocteau. I wish to joke that my grandfather was the one straight man amassing Cocteau. As a result of exterior of France, if individuals find out about Cocteau, they know him as a queer icon. However my grandfather was obsessive about girls in his life sporting Chanel. In his thoughts, a sublime girl was all the time in Chanel drip. I bear in mind, proper earlier than he died, once I turned 13, I didn’t have a bat mitzvah, however he took me to the Chanel retailer and hooked me up as a result of “You’re a girl now,” and chic girls put on Chanel and solely Chanel. Cocteau truly sketched quite a lot of Chanel’s designs within the Thirties. She put him on retainer, and quite a lot of the time, that was the one actual cash that he earned.
It’s attention-grabbing to look at Cocteau’s place in World Conflict II, France, as a result of he was associates with Chanel, who was sleeping with Nazis, whereas he himself was focused by Nazis for being a degenerate and for being gay. His life companion, who he was residing with in the course of the struggle, Jean Marais, was at one level placed on an inventory for deportation. Cocteau known as his good friend Arnaud Brecker, who was Hitler’s favourite artist, to get him off the record. At present, we consider that interval as being so black and white relating to who was good and who was unhealthy. However there have been lots of people who had been simply doing their greatest to get via the day alive in no matter approach they might. I feel it’s an necessary historic lesson. There are all the time going to be individuals on both excessive of the spectrum. There are going to be people who find themselves on the street getting arrested, getting tear-gassed, like we noticed in L.A. There are additionally people who find themselves doing issues below the radar. And it’d appear to be they’re not doing something, and that could be a unhealthy look. However then it’ll end up that possibly they’ve been doing one thing actually necessary all alongside, and so they simply couldn’t speak about it, as a result of it’s not advantageous. I don’t suppose the human situation loves nuance, significantly in our time. I actually attempt to drive individuals to take a seat with the discomfort of issues not being black and white as a result of they’re grey the vast majority of the time.
I really like that. What made you notice that you just wanted to be the consultant of this assortment?
My grandfather actually noticed in me, my cousins and my sister the qualities that might emerge once we grew to become adults, and favored to nourish them. I’ve a cousin who’s a nice artist, and he was all the time hooking her up with canvases and paints and watercolors. In my sister, he noticed a extremely smart mathematical mind, so they might play dominoes and video games that concerned math collectively. For me, he noticed that I used to be actually into Cocteau. As a child, after breakfast, he would inform me to go get a pocket book and a pen, and he would stroll me via his home and the entire artwork within it and have me take notes. With a glitter gel pen and Lisa Frank notebooks, I’m writing data at seven years outdated about Jean Cocteau items, proper? I studied and researched and wrote so much about Cocteau as a young person and in college. Then I graduated and was residing my very own life, working as a intercourse educator. In the midst of the night time one night time, I used to be like, I feel I should be doing Cocteau issues. And since I’m a intercourse educator, I’ve the capability to teach individuals. That’s the very, very quick model. In a bizarre approach, it’s like each step has led to the place I’m now.
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