- The Museum of Modern Art (NYC) had a showing of his drawings and paintings, composed while he was a patient in a mental institution, where he was encouraged to draw and paint as part of his therapy. (1996)
- He didn't want any church burial but his family decided to do it against his will. Only actress María Casares and a few other friends tried to oppose.
- Surrealist poet, stage actor, movie writer and movie actor.
- Antonin Artaud, screenwriter of The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928), was enraged with Germaine Dulac, the female director who had made the film. At the première, that took place at the Salle des Ursulines, Artaud and a friend of his began to shout to each other: "Who did this film ?" "Madame Germaine Dulac did !" "And who is madame Dulac ?" "She's a cow!".
- French singer Charles Trenet said Artaud was "a permanent suicide".
- In 1926, Artaud, Robert Aron and the expelled surrealist Roger Vitrac founded the Théâtre Alfred Jarry (TAJ).They staged four productions between June 1927 and January 1929. The Theatre was extremely short-lived, but was attended by an enormous range of European artists, including Arthur Adamov, André Gide, and Paul Valéry.
- In 1943, when France was occupied by the Germans and Italians, Robert Desnos arranged to have Artaud transferred to the psychiatric hospital in Rodez, well inside Vichy territory, where he was put under the charge of Dr. Gaston Ferdière. At Rodez Artaud underwent therapy including electroshock treatments and art therapy. The doctor believed that Artaud's habits of crafting magic spells, creating astrology charts, and drawing disturbing images were symptoms of mental illness. In 1946, Ferdière released Artaud to his friends, who placed him in the psychiatric clinic at Ivry-sur-Seine.
- At Ivry-sur-Seine Artaud's friends encouraged him to write and interest in his work was rekindled. He visited a Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the Orangerie in Paris and wrote the study Van Gogh le suicidé de la société ["Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society"]; in 1947, the French magazine K published it. In 1949, the essay would be first of Artaud's to be translated in a United States based publication, the influential literary magazine Tiger's Eye.
- From 1907 to 1914, Artaud attended the Collége Sacré-Coeur. Here he began reading works by Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Edgar Allan Poe and founded a private literary magazine in collaboration with his friends. At the end of college he started to noticeably withdraw from social life and "destroyed most of his written work and gave away his books."Distressed, his parents arranged for him to see a psychiatrist. Over the next five years Artaud was admitted to a series of sanatoria. There was a pause in his treatment in 1916, when Artaud was conscripted into the French Army.[2]:26 He was discharged due to "an unspecified health reason" (Artaud would later claim it was "due to sleepwalking", while his mother ascribed it to his "nervous condition"). In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed laudanum for Artaud, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiates. In March 1921, Artaud moved to Paris where he was put under the psychiatric care of Dr Édouard Toulouse who took him in as a boarder.
- His friend René Thomas gave him a walking-stick of knotted wood that Artaud believed contained magical powers and was the 'most sacred relic of the Irish church, the Bachall Ísu, or "Staff of Jesus". Artaud traveled to Ireland, landing at Cobh and travelling to Galway, possibly in an effort to return the staff. According to Irish Government papers he was deported as "a destitute and undesirable alien". On his return trip by ship, Artaud believed he was being attacked by two crew members, and he retaliated; he was put in a straitjacket and he was involuntarily retained by the police upon his return to France.
- Artaud died on 4 March 1948. He was found by the gardener of the estate alone in a psychiatric clinic at the foot of his bed, clutching his shoe, from an overdose of chloral hydrate his doctor prescribed to control the pain from a very advanced and inoperable rectal cancer. It is unknown whether he was aware of its lethality.
- The band Bauhaus included a song about the playwright, called "Antonin Artaud", on their album Burning from the Inside.
- Filmmaker E. Elias Merhige, during an interview by writer Scott Nicolay, cited Artaud as a key influence for the experimental film Begotten.
- Artaud has had a profound influence on theatre, avant-garde art, literature, psychiatry and other disciplines.
- His first work in the theatre was with French theatre director Lugné Poe who described Artaud as "a painter lost in the midst of actors".
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