Jean Cocteau: He invents. He transfigures. He mythifies. He creates. He fancies himself an artist.
Jean Cocteau Museum
From 1950 onwards, Jean Cocteau was a frequent guest at the French Riviera. In 1955, he was invited to attend the Classical Music Festival in nearby Menton. Delighted by the experience, he developed an attachment to the town and befriended the mayor, who suggested he decorate the town’s wedding hall. In recognition of this work, which Cocteau accomplished in 1957 and 1958, Menton declared him an honorary citizen. The Cocteau hall remains to this day a popular venue for weddings in the town.
The decision to create the museum was made by the Menton city council in December 2003. 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”.
Temporary Closure
On the night between 29 and 30 October 2018, a severe storm hit the Menton region. The museum, which is around 50 metres away from the shore, was hit by waves and its basement was flooded. The museum’s management (Menton’s city council) had decided to store a number of works in the basement. Those works were damaged by seawater, and the ground floor was also partially flooded. As a result of the storm, management decided to shut down the museum until further notice in order to allow for restoration of the damaged works at several locations throughout France.
Bastion Museum
The Bastion Museum houses the works by Jean Cocteau and is located on the harbor wall of Menton. The Bastion was built in the 17th century by Honoré II, Prince of Monaco.
The fort housed a brick-vaulted guardroom and a kitchen on the upper floor and a gunpowder magazine on the lower floor. The oven can still be seen in what used to be the kitchen. Access from land was made via a wooden walkway and steps through a doorway on the upper level, above which the Grimaldi crest carved in the stone lintel is still visible.
After Menton seceded from Monaco in 1848, the fort was used as a salt storehouse. When the harbor was built in the late 19th century, the Bastion was integrated into the mole and converted into a lighthouse. It later served as a jail during World War II.
In September 1957, the mayor of Menton also offered Cocteau to create a museum in the Bastion. Enthusiastic about the project, the artist worked on rearranging and decorating the building in his last years, as well as selecting the pieces he wanted exhibited there. Cocteau decorated the alcoves, reception hall and outer walls with mosaics made from pebbles. The Bastion museum opened to the public in 1966, three years after Cocteau’s death.
One artist. Two Museums. A lifetime of treasures.