Un Balzac picassiano, un Picasso balzaquiano: Mr Frenhofer and the Minotaur, de Sidney Peterson

Abstract

The article examines the short film Mr Frenhofer and the Minotaur (1949), the unique surrealistic adaptation that the American avant-garde director Sidney Peterson made of Balzac’s famous story Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (1837). Firstly, a brief introduction is given to the main elements of the story and its powerful imprint on the history of art. Then, the film’s two most relevant and innovative contributions are considered: on the one hand, the fusion of Balzac’s story and Picasso’s artistic ideas and, on the other hand, the use of anamorphosis as a technique to turn the film itself into a representation of the kind of art that critics and many artists have seen advocated in Balzac's story and, in particular, in the character and in the mysterious work of the painter Frenhofer, its protagonist.

Keywords

• literature
• cinema
• painting
• avant-garde
• surrealism
• anamorphosis