The majority of drawings in this volume - obsessional, worship, and sexually explicit - could not be published in Jean Cocteau's lifetime. Before the first publication of Erotica in the early 1990's, few of these images had been seen in Britain.
Cocteau's models came from a variety of different backgrounds. Some were casual pickups, others were lovers and friends. Among those represented here are two of his most famous lovers - the precocious writer Raymond Radiguet and the actor Jean Marais. Cocteau also drew many of his distinguished contemporaries; included here are candid portraits of Picasso, Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Apollinaire, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan and Mistinguett, 'Queen of the Paris Music Hall'.
Highly revealing of Cocteau's search for his own personal truth, these sensitively drawn and at times haunting works have taken their place beside erotica of such artists as Picasso, Modigliani, Schiele and Neizestny.
