Jean Cocteau Museum
| Musée Jean Cocteau collection Séverin Wunderman | |
The Jean Cocteau Museum on the beach at Menton
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| Established | November 6, 2011 |
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| Location | Menton, Alpes-Maritimes, France |
| Coordinates | 43°46′29″N 7°30′21″E / 43.77472°N 7.50583°ECoordinates: 43°46′29″N 7°30′21″E / 43.77472°N 7.50583°E |
| Type | Modern art |
| Director | Françoise Leonelli |
| Website | museecocteaumenton |
The Jean Cocteau Museum/Séverin Wunderman Collection is a museum in Menton, on the French Riviera, in the Alpes-Maritimes department. Dedicated to the French artist Jean Cocteau, it incorporates the collection of American businessman and Cocteau enthusiast Séverin Wunderman.
The decision to create the museum was made by the Menton city council in December 2003. An international competition was held by the council in 2007, with a winner for the design of the museum announced in June 2008. The foundation stone was laid in December 2008, with the shell completed in January 2011. The competition to design the museum building was won by French architect Rudy Ricciotti, an exponent of 'hedonist architecture' in the 1980s. Ricciotti had previously designed the new Islamic art wing at the Louvre, among other cultural commissions. Ricciotti's design was directly inspired by Cocteau's life and work, he has said of the museum's design that "Black and white no longer serve as colours here...they create an interplay of structural forces calling to mind both the artist’s works on paper and the poet’s personality, his zones of light and darkness, his enigmatic self-mythology fueled by contrasts." The distinctive facade of the building has been variously described as "...like a fierce set of teeth or a string of alabaster forearms holding up the sky" and "...like a spider, with jagged black pillars sprawling leg-like over the building".
Among the financial backers of the museum was Pierre Bergé, partner of the late Yves Saint Laurent. The museum took eight years to create, and is 29,000 sq ft in size.
Divided into seven parts, the museum contains almost 1000 graphic works by Cocteau, with the majority of the collection from collector Severin Wunderman. Wunderman was 19 when he began collecting works by Cocteau. He had offered his collection to the University of Texas, but later withdrew the offer, keeping his collection in his own Cocteau museum in Irvine, California, which he dedicated in 1985. He would frequently lend pieces to exhibitions and shows.
The scope of the collection spans early avant-garde graphic works with pencil, pastel, and watercolours on paper, to his films, with extensive clips from his "Orphic Trilogy". As well as Cocteau's work, the museum contains a collection of 240 original photographic prints by Lucien Clergue relating to the work of Cocteau, mostly taken during the filming of Testament of Orpheus.
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