Mystery Man.(Jean Cocteau)

"The worst tragedy for a poet," Jean Cocteau wrote in 1926, "is to be admired through being misunderstood." Yet that is what has happened to Cocteau. Indeed, he may be the most famous 20th-century artist whose works remain unknown. A respected poet in the 1920s, Cocteau's writings are not taught in schools. An important contributor to Sergei Diaghilev's famed Ballets Russes, his work is not studied or reproduced. Cocteau was a true artistic polyglot whose most prolific period was the decade following World War I. Yet he reached his height of celebrity after World War II, when he chaired the Cannes Film Festival and directed such surrealist films as "Beauty and the Beast," starring his matinee-idol boyfriend, Jean Marais. Cocteau became--and remains--an icon, but no one really knows why.

Forty years after his death, the Centre Pompidou in Paris hopes to correct that with the first Cocteau retrospective. "Jean Cocteau: On the Thread of the Century" (through Jan. 5) displays not only a staggering number of his photographs, writings, films, drawings, even menu doodles, but also tries to re-create his world, with pictures of his friends by his friends at work and play. The goal, it seems, is to educate the public about his boundless talent and vast influence. And while the show certainly succeeds in illustrating his immense output, it ultimately fails by providing only negligible introductions to each section--and no explanation of the works on display. Cocteau remains an enigma.

His life story cries out for illumination. Born in 1889 to a haute bourgeois family in a tony Paris suburb, Cocteau was taught early on that the pursuit of literature, painting and drawing was "a sport, an exercise like fencing," as he later wrote. His family took him to the Comedie Francaise twice a week to see the French classics. His mother was a Parisian socialite with a questionable reputation; it was even said that Cocteau was a love child. When he was 8, his father, a lawyer, killed himself. Cocteau later suggested that his father may have committed suicide because he was a latent homosexual. In the aftermath, Cocteau grew extremely close to his mother, and became obsessed with death and the myth of Oedipus. Later he mounted several plays, including Sophocles' "Antigone," that dealt with those themes.

A poor student, Cocteau failed the baccalaureate examination twice and never received a diploma. But he began to write poetry and, thanks to his mother, was invited to Parisian salons, where his works were read. In 1909, when he was 19, his first volume of poems, "Aladdin's Lamp," was published. His second, "The Frivolous Prince"--which later became his moniker--followed in 1910, and his third two years later.

During World War I, Cocteau served as an ambulance driver on the Belgian front. Upon his return to Paris, he struck up friendships with Modigliani, Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire and Picasso, who particularly fascinated him. "I admired his intelligence and clung to everything he said, for he spoke little," Cocteau wrote. Immersed in this avant-garde clan, Cocteau penned "Parade," a ballet for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with sets by Picasso. The ...