The Jean Cocteau House

The House: A journey into the world of Jean Cocteau

The House of the Bailli, leaning against the castle of the Bonde, is a beautiful house of the seventeenth century, built in stones of the country and surrounded by gardens and canals. Jean Cocteau set up his refuge there, away from the bustle of Paris.

The garden: A natural setting

On three sides of the house are the gardens, separated by the arms of the river Ecole, which once surrounded the castle. Fruit trees, flowering beds, roses, make up a colorful set, crossed by small bridges. Jean Cocteau liked to stroll through his apple orchard, surrounded by generous flower beds, or, as he left his living room, to greet the two sphinges leaning against the house that evoke the poetic universe of his illustrious owner.

EXHIBITIONS 2022

Jean Cocteau’s enchanted bestiary

In Milly-la-Forêt, Jean Cocteau finds the framework to allow him to compose fully a universe that echoes his work and reveals his aesthetic passions. This is how sphinges, mermaids, merry-go-round horses, scan the spaces of their presence and echo tapestries adorned with volutes or leopard imitation, furniture adorned with horns or chairs with animal legs.
This exhibition highlights the animals that inhabit the house. Without any external borrowing, it offers a new look on these objects and underlines the importance of them, as all echo the work of the artist.

Star me! Parade, a ballet story.

Parade is a ballet commissioned by Jean Cocteau by Serge de Diaghilev, promoter of the Ballets Russes in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. For Cocteau, it is a question of taking up the challenge that Diaghilev gave him, anxious to marry the avant-garde: "Etonne-moi!" Just back from the war front of 14-18, Jean Cocteau has the idea of a total show, mixing dance, painting, plastic and mimic. He teamed up with Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso and Léonide Massine to create this unique work. It is about Parade that Apollinaire will use the term "over-realism" for the first time.
Presented in the form of panels and videos, the exhibition Etonne-moi - Parade, a ballet story looks back at this pivotal moment in the history of art of the 20th century. She also proposes to explore the interdisciplinary themes in which Parade fits.

The indifference of the stars

Also discover «L'indifference des Astres» at the Maison Jean Cocteau. An installation by Les Epoux P, which echoes the use of light and sheets, white pages of the poet, in his 1946 masterpiece La Belle et la Bête. White sheets, vectors of light, are installed at the bottom of the garden, halfway between the ordinance of the orchard and the exuberance of the forest. They reveal a new image with each flash and the shapes metamorphose. Through this luminous, iridescent device, Jean Cocteau’s garden is transformed and made to communicate the solar and antisolar, the positive and the negative, the reverse and the place… After your visit to the House, enjoy this radiant and poetic show.