Persons of Note: Alfred Jarry

Alfred Jarry was a french symbolist writer, and his most well known play "Ubu Roi" paved the way for modernism in the 20th century.

He lived a typically bohemian lifestyle, dedicating his life to his writing and leaving little room for comforts other than alcohol (which was a big part of his life, in particular absinthe). For a lot of his life he didn't have a lot of money, and he died relatively young due to tuberculosis that was exacerbated by drug and alcohol use.

He was described as quite a charming and intelligent person, and his work was far ahead of its time and influenced a lot of well known writers, such as Burroughs and Ballard. He was an important precursor to the Dadaists, surrealists and british pop art movement.

When he was at school, him and his class mates made fun of one of the teachers, who was called Hébert. Jarry and another friend wrote a play with one character based off of the teacher and named it Père Heb. Later in life, this play and character developed into Ubu Roi.

The main part of Alfred Jarry's legacy was this play and its impact on french literature and modernism. The character Ubu was meant to be a metaphor for modern man - fat, stupid, greedy, cowardly etc. The play was a based loosely off of Shakespeare plays such as Macbeth and Hamlet.

This is the synopsis of the play from wikipedia.

The first word of the play is 'merde', which at the time caused a lot of controversy and uproar when it was first performed, and after that it was banned from theatres and was only performed in puppet theatre. The play had such a large impact because of how controversial it is in terms of overturning cultural norms and conventions, and its use of satire to comment on society at that time.

Alfred Jarry is a very interesting person and would be fun to use for this project, but through my research I have struggled to find any imagery or symbolism associated with him so it would be difficult to create designs that reflect him or his work without being quite obscure. Regardless, I am going to experiment with doing drawings for all three in my sketchbook and see which work best. At the moment, I am drawn towards Charles and Ray Eames.