Kiki of Montparnasse

I just finished reading the wonderful graphic novel, Kiki de Montparnasse which brought back a flood of memories from third year University where I studied the literary Montparnasse of the 20s and 30s through Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and later looked at the whole community of creative expatriates and bohemians who gathered there from all corners of the globe.

Here’s a trailer for the graphic novel (worth watching if you are remotely curious…)

I knew enough about Kiki whose real name was Alice Prin to know she was a model, muse, cabaret performer, and artist but I didn’t quite realize how many times her likeness had been captured or by how many artists. She posed for sculptors, painters, and charcoal artists, and perhaps most famously for the photographer and film-maker Man Ray. She lived a full life with very few regrets. Even after the war scattered many of the expatriates, she continued to perform and play the life of the party.

I’ve spent a sizable portion of the last few hours wandering internet rabbitholes looking at art, watching films, and trying in vain to find any hint of her singing — she performed live frequently but also recorded some singles that I’d hoped to find on archive.org.

One detail that caught my attention in the graphic novel was in regard to Man Ray’s Dadaist film, L’Etoile de Mer which the authors suggest was blurred by using a pane of stained glass over the camera. Whatever method was used, the effect meant that the film escaped any censorship. If you can sit through a 15 minute art film, I do recommend it — the ending actually startled me.

Above all though, Kiki will be remembered as the inspiration for some of the most iconic art of the 1920s and 30s: