Boys For Breakfast, Boys For Lunch And A Proper Dinner...

Jean Maurice Eugene Clement Cocteau... Visionary, playwright, opium addict, painter, sculptor, potter, poet, film director, novelist, theatrical designer, exuberant homosexual and all round inspiration... How's that for an introduction?


I was introduced to the works of Jean Cocteau by a friend and was instantly captivated by the strange, wafer-thin man. He was an energetic concoction of man and faerie and mythological being all rolled into one wiry, angular body.
I have often been known to state that I was born to the wrong era. His life of gay abandon and artistic experimentation set against the hedonistic backdrop of the French Riviera in the 40/50's is one I am most jealous to have not been a part of.
His artwork still adorns the dockside chapel in the town of Villefranche. I love the obvious clash of a chapel built for the hard, very heterosexual laborers of a french dock that is covered from ceiling to floor in the homoerotic frolicings of  toned, beautiful angels and muscular fishermen. What a sense of humour he had...

I cannot help but feel a great deal of jealousy towards the likes of Jean Marais (Cocteau's Muse). It was his face that inspired hundreds of Cocteau's grecian paintings. He stood as the epitome of male beauty in Cocteau's eyes and starred in many of Jean's films including Orphee and both the role of the beast and the opposing prince in La Belle Et La Bette.


Oh dear... I'm living in the wrong generation. How I'd love to sidle toward the seafront in Villefranche, dressed in 1930's attire and introduce myself to the visionary that was Cocteau. No doubt he'd be sitting at the dockside smoking and enjoying the company of a great many beautiful, young men...
Oh well... I've viewed his murals in the French church on Leicester Square, Chuckled at the interior of his painted chapel and stood next to his sculpture by the boats in the harbour of Villefranche. That's about as close as I'll ever get... Humph!!
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