Antonin

Artaud
1896-1948

This image by
Man Ray taken in
1926
Artaud in 1947
 1896 and all that
•  Births of Andre Breton, Tristran Tzara
and Artaud (September 4)
•  premiere of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu, Oscar
Wilde’s Salome, Anton Checkhov’s The
Seagull
•  first modern Olympics in Paris,
•  death of Alfred Nobel and birth of the
prize
•  Sigmund Freud’s Aetiology of Hysteria
 Artaud’s work
•  letters
•  theatre, art and film reviews and criticism,
•  essays, texts on theatre, manifestoes, poems, screenplays
(notably 'La coquille et le clergyman' of 1927), a novel,
translations from English texts by Lewis Carroll and
Shelley's 'The Cenci' fragments,
•  spells, sketches, portraits,
•  recordings
•  acting roles in cinema and on stage.
•  There are 28 volumes of his Oeuvres Complètes in French
chez Gallimard.
 Artaud Chronology
•  1921 joins Théâtre de l’Atelier dir Charles Dullin
•  1922 actor and designer with Théâtre de l’Atelier
•  1923 joins Pitoeff at Comédie des Çhamps- Elysées in a
number of productions including Six Characters in Search
of an Author by Pirandello
•  Begins writing to Jacques Rivière, editor of NRF
•  1924 Fait Divers screen debut, ‘L’Evolution du décor’
published in Comoedia, joins the Surrealists
•  1925 Director of the Surrealist Research Bureau, shooting
of Napoleon by Abel Gance.
 Artaud Chronology
•  1925 ‘Sur le suicide’ in Le Disque Vert, no. 1
•  ‘Textes surréalistes’, ‘Réponse à l'enquête sur le Suicide’,
‘Rêves’, in La Revolution Surréaliste no. 2
•  ‘L'activité du Bureau de recherches surréalistes’, ‘Lettre
aux Recteurs des Universités Européennes’, ‘Adresse au
Pape’, ‘Adresse au Dalai-Lama’, ‘Lettre aux Médecins-
Chefs des asiles de fous’, in La Revolution Surréaliste no.
3
•  Le Pèse-Nerfs, suivi de Lettres de ménage (couverture de
André Masson), impr. de Leibovitz, Paris
•  L'Ombilic des Limbes, NRF Gallimard, Paris
•  ‘Nouvelle lettre sur moi-même’, in La Revolution
Surréaliste no. 5
 Artaud Chronology
•  1926 ‘L'Enclume des forces’, ‘Invocation à la Momie’;
poèmes, in La Revolution Surréaliste no.7
•  ‘Lettre à la voyante’, ‘Uccello le poil’, in La Revolution
Surréaliste no. 8
•  Formation of Théâtre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and
Robert Aron
•  Expulsion from Surrealists
•  1927 A la grande nuit, ou le Bluff surrealiste, Paris
(l'auteur)
•  Correspondance avec Jacques Rivière, NRF, Gallimard,
Paris
 Late 1920s
•  1927-28 performances of Théâtre Alfred Jarry
•  ‘L'Osselet Toxique’, in La Revolution Surréaliste
no. 9
•  June 1928 performance of A Dream Play
disrupted by Surrealists results in a final break.

•  Writes screenplay for The

Seashell and the Clergyman dir
Germaine Dulac 1928
 Films
•  La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (dir Carl Dreyer
1927)
•  Napoleon dir Abel Gance 1927
La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (dir Carl
Dreyer 1927)
As Marat in Napoleon
Artaud in L’Argent
 Filmography 1920s
1. Fait-divers (1923) dir. Claude Autant-Lara
2. Enfant roi, L' (1923) dir. Jean Kemm
3. Surcouf (1924) dir. Luitz-Morat
4. Juif errant, Le (1926) dir. Luitz-Morat....
Jacques Dupuis, dit Gringalet
5. Graziella (1926) dir. Marcel Vandal
6. La Coquille et le Clergyman, (1927) dir.
Germaine Dulac… Screenwriter
7. Napoleon (1927) dir. Abel Gance.... Marat
(At least 19 different versions of the film exist)
Filmography 1920s cont’d
8. Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, La (1928) dir. Carl
Dreyer.... Jean Massieu ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc (La
passion de Jeanne d'Arc) is widely regarded as Danish director
Carl Theodor Dreyer's finest achievement and one of the greatest
films of all time. Dreyer recreates the trial and execution of St.
Joan with near-documentary authenticity.’ Hal Erickson, All
Movie Guide
9. Verdun, visions d'histoire (1928) dir. eon
Poirier .... The Intellectuel
10. Argent, L' (1928) dir. Marcel L'Herbier....
Mazaud based on a novel by Emile Zola, of the same title.
 Filmography 1930’s
11. Femme d'une nuit, La (1930) dir. Marcel L'Herbier....
Jaroslav
12. Tarakanova (1930) dir. Raymond Bernard.... Le jeune
tzigane
13. Opera de quat'sous, L' (1931) dir. G.W. Pabst... aka The
Threepenny Opera (USA: literal English title)
14. Faubourg Montmartre (1931) dir. Raymond Bernard....
Follestat
15. Mater dolorosa (1932) dir. Abel Gance.
16. Croix de bois, Les (1932) dir. Raymond Bernard ....
Soldat Vieuble... aka Wooden Crosses (International:
English title)
17.  Coup de feu a l'aube (1932) dir. Serge de Poligny.... Le
Trembleur
18. Enfant de ma soeur, L' (1933) dir. Henry Wulschleger ....
Loche
 1930’s cont’d
19. Sidonie Panache (1934) dir. Henry Wulschleger
20. Napoeon Bonaparte (1934) dir. Abel Gance.....
Marat. A re-edited version of Abel Gance's silent
masterpiece 'Napoleon (1927 )' , with sound effects
added, dialogue post-dubbed by actors over the lip
movements of the original actors, and with new scenes
filmed with additional new cast members.
21. Liliom (1934) dir. Fritz lang..... Knife Grinder
Synopsis: Liliom, Ferenc Molnar's bittersweet fantasy play,
was first filmed in Hollywood in 1930 later remade as
Carousel.
22. Lucrece Borgia (1935) dir. Abel Gance .... Girolamo
Savonarola
23. Konigsmark (1935) dir. Maurice Tourneur.... Cyrus
Back
 1930s
•  1931 Sees Balinese dance at Paris Colonial Exposition
•  Treatment for drug addiction
•  Lecture at Sorbonne: ‘Mise en Scène and Metaphysics’
•  ‘First Manifesto for a Theatre of Cruelty’ in NRF No. 229.
•  April 1933 Lecture at Sorbonne: ‘Theatre and the Plague’
•  1935 The Cenci at Folies Wagram
•  1936 January - November in Mexico
•  1937 At Maison d’Art in Brussels, marriage to Cecile
Schramme called off
 The Asylum Years
•  August 1936 to Ireland
•  September 1936 - May 1946 detained in asylums: Le
Havre, Saint Anne in Paris (1938-9), Ville Evrard in Seine
et Marne (1939-43), Rodez (1943-46)
•  May 1946 Return to Paris Ivry sur Seine
•  13 Jan 1947 Lecture at Vieux Colombier
•  May 1947 Writes ‘Van Gogh the Suicide of Society’
•  Sept- Dec ‘To have Done with the judgement of God’
•  March 4 1948 found dead
 7th February 1938 Le Théatre et son Double,
Gallimard (collection 'Métamorphoses'), Paris (The
Theatre and its Double)

•  Key images/metaphors for the theatre:

•  the plague, ‘stage acting should be a delirium like the
plague, and should be infectious.’ (Le Théâtre Et Son
Double p39)
•  alchemy, Balinese dance, the Seraphim (the highest order
of angels)
•  and even a Dutch painting ‘Lot and His Daughters’ Lucas
Van Leyden 1520
•  Artaud describes his admiration for the transgressive
themes of incest and catastrophe in this image in his
chapter 'La mise en scène et la metaphysique'.
Oil  on Wood
Completed in 1520
Original dimensions:
34.0cm x 48.0cm (13.4in
x 18.9in) Original
Painting held in Louvre
Paris  
 The Theatre of Cruelty:
•  ‘I use the word cruelty in the sense of hungering
after life, of cosmic rigour and of implacable
necessity... And the theatre in the sense of
constant creation and of a total magic action
obeying this necessity.’ (TD 159,60)
•  ‘a dynamism never characterised, never situated,
never defined, where perpetual invention is the
law’ (ibid 17)
 Theatre as Life
•  ‘The theatre must equate itself with life. Not with that
aspect of life where characters triumph but with a kind
of liberated life which sweeps away individuality and
where man is only a reflection.’ (TD 180)
•  ‘Moreover, when we say the word life, one must
understand that its not a matter of life as recognised by
external facts, but by that kind of frail, shifting source
which forms never attain. And if there is still
something infernal and truly damned in these times, it
is this dithering artistically over forms, instead of
being like those tortured at the stake, signalling
through the flames (from their pyres).’ (TD 19 -20)
 Theatre of the Real?
•  ‘This can be seen, for example, in the perilous presence of
living creatures onstage: live tarantulas in Jan Fabre’s Elle
était et elle est, même (1993), poisonous snakes in Jan
Lauwers’s Antonius und Cleopatra (1992), and, most
recently, an entire colony of rats in aquariums in Marina
Abramovic and Charles Atlas’s Delusional’ (1994).…
•  ‘the actor’s overexertion and exhaustion onstage …For
instance, in Jan Fabre’s Who Shall Speak My Thought . . .
(1993) … Real physical exhaustion and pain have been
used in dance theatre as well, as a form of
authentification.’
•  Helga Finter ‘Antonin Artaud and the Impossible Theatre: The Legacy of the
Theatre of Cruelty’, trans. Matthew Griffin, TDR, 41. 4, Winter 1997, 15-40.
 Jacques Derrida:what is foreign to
the theatre of cruelty?
1. All non-sacred theatre.
2. All theatre that privileges speech or rather the verb, all theatre of words
3. All abstract theatre… An abstract theatre is a theatre in which the
totality of sense and the senses is not consumed.
4. All theatre of alienation. Alienation only consecrates, with didactic
insistence and systematic heaviness, the non-participation of spectators
(and even of directors and actors) in the creative act, in the irruptive
force fissuring the space of the stage.
5. All nonpolitical theatre.
6. All ideological theatre, all cultural theatre, all communicative,
interpretive … theatre seeking to transmit a content, or to deliver a
message
Jacques Derrida ‘Le Théâtre de la Cruauté et la Clôture de la
representation’
 Jerzy Grotowski
•  ‘Grotowski returns us to the central challenge that Artaud's
theatre writings extend to practitioners,
•  how to find the necessity of the gesture, to peel away the
strata of fictions and expose the raw impulse, the nervous
system of performance.
•  From here, Grotowski suggests, the performer can go
anywhere, even ultimately outside the theatrical itself. Just
as Artaud could not finally constrain his ideas to the
theatrical frame, so Grotowski found his experiments less
and less in need of a validating audience. Like Artaud, he
would develop his rituals of transformation elsewhere.’
•  Edward Scheer Antonin Artaud A Critical Reader
 Grotowski on Artaud
•  ‘the true lesson of the sacred theatre; whether we
speak of the medieval European drama, the
Balinese, or the Indian Kathakali: this knowledge
that spontaneity and discipline, far from
weakening each other, mutually reinforce
themselves’
•  ‘Artaud puts forward the idea of great release, a
great transgression of conventions, a purification
by violence and cruelty’
•  Grotowski, J. (1968) Towards a Poor Theatre, trans. M. Buszewicz and J.
Barba, London: Methuen.
 Examples?

•  ‘Conceived as an art form at the juncture of other

signifying practices as varied as dance, music, painting ,
architecture and sculpture, performance seems
paradoxically to correspond to the new theatre invoked by
Artaud.’
•  Josette Feral in Elizabeth Wright Postmodern Brecht pll5
 Examples?
•  La Fura dels Baus
•  Jan Fabre (1958…) Elle était et elle est, même (1993)
•  Who Shall Speak My Thought . . . (1993)
•  Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Museum of Fetishized
Identities (July 2001)
•  Ankoku Butoh: Dance of the dark soul
•  Originators: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ono
•  Companies: Sankai juku, Mai juku, Dairakudakan
•  Ankoku Butoh (the 'dance of the dark soul') has frequently
been compared with Artaud's ideas for a physical, anti-
psychological, anti-textual performance practice
 Faites vous d’Artaud

•  Listen to the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the Uk at full volume

•  Go to a Marilyn Manson concert or watch ‘The Beautiful
People’ video with the sound down
•  Attend a butoh performance and watch closely
•  Watch a Marx Bros film
•  Go to http://www.stelarc.va.com.au and follow all the links
•  View any work by the Societas Raffaello Sanzio eg. The
Film Cycle of the Tragedia Endogonidia (a production of
the Societas Raffaello Sanzio) video memory by Cristiano
Carloni and Stefano Franceschetti
•  Attend an exhibition of works by Mike Parr
 Artaud’s critique of representation

•  is now echoed in the work of performance artists such as

Marina Abramovic, Stelarc, Mike Parr and in the surgical
interventions performed by Orlan all of whom provoke the
limit of the body and demonstrate the contingency of its
construction and its significance in culture. We read
Artaud’s trace in any aesthetic practice where actual bodily
changes are made by the performer as a gesture of defiance
of the notions of the socialised restriction of bodily
behaviours and of biology conceived of as destiny. (Scheer
2009)
Close the Concentration Camps: 1-6pm on Saturday 15 June

2002 at the Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne
Kingdom Come. Or Punch Holes in the Body Politic
(April 8-10 2005)
Water From The Mouth - a 10 day performance,
Artspace (April 26 - May 5, 2001).
Artaud Self portrait May 1946
The Theatre of Cruelty
Self Portrait June 1947
Self portrait Dec 1946
Spell for Leon Fouks