Cultural references to Pierrot

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Cultural references to Pierrot have been made since the inception of the character in the 17th century. His character in contemporary popular culture — in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall — is that of the sad clown, often pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Many cultural movements found him amenable to their respective causes: Decadents turned him into a disillusioned foe of idealism; Symbolists saw him as a lonely fellow-sufferer; Modernists converted him into a Whistlerian subject for canvases devoted to form and color and line.

This page lists the extensive use of Pierrot's stock character (whiteface with a tear, white shirt, cap, etc.) chronologically arranged according to country and artistic medium (e.g. music, film, literature). The vast geographical range from Europe to Asia and beyond shows how widespread interest in Pierrot is, as does the variation in the artistic styles, from traditional ballet to rap-songs and music videos.

France

Antoine Watteau: Italian Actors, c. 1719. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Playwrights

Eighteenth century

France

Performing artists

Antoine Watteau: Gilles (or Pierrot) and Four Other Characters of the Commedia dell'arte, c. 1718. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Nicolas Lancret: Actors of the Comédie-Italienne, between 1716 and 1736. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard: A Boy as Pierrot, between 1776 and 1780. The Wallace Collection, London.

Plays

  • Trophonius's Cave (1722) and The Golden Ass (1725)[5]

Songs

Visual arts

England

Performers

  • Carlo Delpini as Pierrot[7] So conceived, Pierrot was easily and naturally displaced by the native English Clown when the latter found a suitably brilliant interpreter. It did so in 1800, when "Joey" Grimaldi made his celebrated debut in the role.[8]
  • Tiberio Fiorilli as Scaramouche in London.[9]
  • John Rich, The Jealous Doctor; or, The Intriguing Dame, pantomime

Denmark

Performers

Francisco de Goya: Itinerant Actors (1793). Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Germany

Plays

Spain

Paintings

  • Goya's Itinerant Actors (1793)

Nineteenth century

Deburau at the Théâtre des Funambules

Auguste Bouquet: Jean-Gaspard Deburau, c. 1830.

Performers

Writers

Visual arts

Pantomime after Baptiste: Charles Deburau, Paul Legrand, and their successors

Writers

  • Marquis Pierrot (1847)
  • Pantomime of the Attorney (1865)
  • Gustave Flaubert, Pierrot in the Seraglio (1855)

Pantomime and late nineteenth-century art

France

Popular and literary pantomime
Atelier Nadar: Sarah Bernhardt in Jean Richepin's Pierrot the Murderer, 1883. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Jules Chéret: Title-page of Hennique and Huysmans' Pierrot the Skeptic, 1881
Paul Cézanne: Mardi gras (Pierrot and Harlequin), 1888, Pushkin Museum, Moscow
  • A female version, Pierrette, appears on the scene
Songs
  • Xavier Privas wrote the songs ["Pierrette Is Dead", "Pierrette's Christmas"]
Performing artists
Visual arts, fiction, poetry, music, and film

Belgium

Painters
Aubrey Beardsley: "The Death of Pierrot", The Savoy, August 1896.

Austria and Germany

Paul Hoecker: Pierrots with Pipes, c. 1900. Location unknown.

Italy

Spain

North America

Central and South America

  • Rubén Darío, 1898 prose-poem The Eternal Adventure of Pierrot and Columbine.

Russia

Dance

Early twentieth century (1901–1950): notable works

Late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries (1951– ): notable works

References

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