Jean Cocteau (1890-1963) was his contemporary Marcel Duchamp?s exact opposite: while Duchamp retreated from creating, Cocteau embraced art in all its forms--music, opera, ballet, and film as well as theatre, novels, graphics, and poetry--while never becoming attached to one "school" (especially not the Surrealists). Angel-weight rather than heavyweight, Cocteau may seem more glitter than gold. But he deserves serious reconsideration, not only for his own art and poetry but also for his role in the process and criticism of the art and media around him, and not least as a self-aware homosexual. He had a finger in every artistic pie in Paris in its modernist golden age. This is the first comprehensive study of the man and his work since his death in 1963. It accompanies the Jean Cocteau retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in September 2003, traveling in 2004 to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. This stunningly illustrated English edition of Cocteau sur le fil du siecle makes available important essays by seventeen French authors, including some who knew Cocteau personally. They illuminatingly reassess his life and art, notably his early career.

Dominique Paini is chief curator of the Cocteau exhibition at the Centre Pompidou.