Maison de santé

Avant-garde playwright and poet Jean Cocteau created this book of stylized self-portraits while undergoing treatment for opium addiction. The drawings within it recount the ups and downs of withdrawal, recovery and hope, expressed with the expert simplicity of paper and ink. Mary Reynolds’s binding perfectly encapsulates Cocteau’s unyielding spirit. Using a technique called “split binding,” she created the front and back cover from two book boards, as opposed to one continuous piece. Each white vellum wrapped board features a cut-out of a star, a symbol Cocteau returned to repeatedly, so much so that it became an element of his signature. The threading is another creative element of this binding. Starting at the fore edge, 25 continuous threads travel from one side of the book to the other, showing themselves through the cut-out stars and along the spine. Reynolds sealed the threads within the two layers of the cover, and any trace of their start or end lies hidden within.

A short epithet in Cocteau’s handwriting describes his drawing practice as a way to cope with not only the physical discomfort of withdrawal but also the boredom of hospitalization. With this in mind, we might read Reynolds’s use of thread as a metaphor for how art can keep us from falling apart.