Raccourcis
L'empreinte de Jean Cocteau sur Villefranche
La Hôtel de bienvenue siège au bord de l'amphithéâtre incurvé de bâtiments pastel qui bordent le Port de la Santé à Villefranche sur mer. Catherine Galbois-Sigwalt est la jeune gérante stylée. Sa famille est propriétaire de ce coin de paradis discret mais élégant depuis 1943.
La chambre 22 est la plus célèbre de la maison. C'est là que, à partir de 1925-1926, Jean Cocteau s'accroupit pour une année d'opium et une phase d'introspection artistique. Il avait été le mentor d'un jeune écrivain brillant, Raymond Radiguet, qui, après un voyage en Afrique ensemble, attrapa la typhoïde et mourut à vingt ans. Cocteau était inconsolable et le Welcome Hotel était son refuge.
La chambre 22 est une palette sereine de bleus et de gris pâles, et il y a une flaque de soleil l'après-midi sur le sol. Le balcon claustra qui surplombe la mer et la Chapelle Saint Pierre . This small church inspired Cocteau to return to Villefranche frequently, and in 1956 he created a masterpiece there, one of several he gave to the Cote d’Azur, where he was drawn so often throughout his life.
The Rolling Stones famously recorded Exile on Main Street at Keith Richards’ tax haven villa, Nellecote, in the summer of 1971, in Villefranche. But it’s Cocteau who has left the deepest imprint here.
It’s hard to convey the magnitude of his acclaim in France and also to describe who and what he really was artistically, besides everything. He was a giant of the 20th century, a provocateur in art, literature, and film. Cocteau never seemed to stop working, crossing over disciplines, garnering the respect, and often collaboration, of the cool friends he made along the way: Marcel Proust, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Diaghilev and Nijinsky from the Ballets Russes, Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich.
He battled a recurrent drug addiction, about which he wrote a startling illustrated memoir: Opium, the Diary of His Cure, and when he went to rehab, Coco Chanel paid the bill. After the roaring 20s, when he cured his opium addiction here and, as he put it, haunted the place with his Parisian friends, he returned time and again. (His opium addiction returned later in life.)
Cocteau loved Villefranche. He painted the fishermen, lived with them and wrote about them. He revealed that he spent the “best time” of his life in Villefranche.
He lived near his pal Colette overlooking the Palais-Royal gardens in Paris and attended bullfights in Nimes and Arles with Pablo Picasso. The New Yorker correspondent Janet Flanner reviewed Cocteau’s 1946 ballet La Mort de Homme in June 1946 and wrote about its creator: “The passage of time seems neither to wither nor even to interrupt the hothouse ripeness of his talent.”
He wrote twenty-three books of poetry, five novels including Les Enfants Terribles, directed eleven films, at least three of which was Orpheus, the original Beauty and the Beast, and The Blood of a Poet. They are classics of French avant-garde cinema. He wrote plays, screenplays, memoirs, did set design and ballet scenarios.
As a visual artist he was equally, if not more prolific, creating paintings, drawings and portraits, the latter of which are instantly recognizable for their simplicity and refinement, using a mini-mum of lines to convey the waves in a subject’s hair or surprise in an eyebrow.
In 1950 he found a new benefactor and friend in heiress socialite Francine Weisweiller. Here is the story of their time together, and the art he created.
The largest collection of his work is ensconced in the 29,000 square foot seaside Cocteau Museum that opened in 2011 in Menton, the city that borders Italy and is known for its citrus orchards and mimosa groves. The multi-talented Cocteau converted the 17th-century fort into his personal museum, called La Bastion. In Menton’s municipal marriage hall, the Salle des Mariages, he painted another triumphant homage to the Cote d’Azur: a mural of a couple under a big Provencal sun.
It took seven years of bureaucratic red tape to gain permission to decorate Saint Pierre, the 14th-century chapel in Villefranche sur mer that had enchanted him for decades and which he feared, as a storage place for fishing nets, would be destroyed by neglect. The Villefranche fishermen also opposed the project until Cocteau arranged to donate the entrance fee to their local fund. He succeeded at last, and was able to complete his work there in 1957 at the age of sixty-eight. With all that resistance, he had to make it brilliant — and he did.
It’s a wondrous achievement, with figures, watchful eyes, and delicate shapes covering every bit of wall space. The renderings are a melange of biblical, figurative and decorative scenes that incorporate the docks, stairways, and the medieval fortress of Villefranche as a backdrop. The simple but evocative drawings are colored with the washed ochre, blues, yellows and pinks of the seaside village.
Un panneau montre des femmes locales portant des paniers de poissons et d'oursins devant des vagues lumineuses sous un essaim d'anges sans visage. Au plafond aussi, les personnages flottent avec la force aérienne des lignes simples de Cocteau. Il y a des représentations de la vie de Saint Pierre, un serviteur le remettant aux gardes romains après la renonciation, et le chant du coq ; quand il marche sur l'eau, les pêcheurs restent bouche bée et les poissons sautent de terreur.
Toutes les scènes sont couronnées par des envolées d'anges, en hommage à la Baie des Anges en Bon. Il n'y a rien à faire que de regarder avec révérence.
En savoir plus sur Jean Cocteau
Continuer à Le temps de Jean Cocteau au Cap Ferrat à la Villa Santo Sospir ou lire sur le musée d'art Jean Cocteau à Menton.
