How many famous people have you slept with?
OK. Unfair. How many famous people have you ever seen in person?
Even if you're a star writing a tell-all book, Kiki's got you beat. At least in the first part. I mean, she never went to the Oscars, or anything, where you can see hundreds of famous people in one venue.
Kiki's Paris is an astonishing collection of photographs, drawings and paintings of Kiki and her friends and lovers accompanied by wonderful stories. She was a model, often nude, as well an artist in her own right, and a particular darling of the Dadaists and Surrealists.
There is currently a show of artists' renderings of Kiki as well as some of her own artwork at Zabriskie Gallery in New York City. They specialize in Dadaist and Surrealist art.
Kiki was born Alice Ernestine Prin in 1901. At 16, she went to Paris, and became a favorite nude model for many of the artists in the Montparnasse district on the Left Bank in the 1920's. When she first got to Paris, she asked if they polished the streets with wax.
In the 1920's, an incredible array of painters, sculptors, writers and photographers inhabited the Left Bank and hung out at the Rotonde.
An early intimate of the group was Modigliani, a handsome and enormously talented painter and sculptor. He died in 1920 at age 36 of a respiratory infection. In despair, his mistress, Jeanne threw herself out of a fifth story window. She was nine months pregnant at the time.
It wasn't all beer and skittles in Montparnasse during its golden age. There were cold-water flats, and angry, deserted wives. There was alcoholism, depression and suicide. There was also love, excitement, genius and freedom.
Reading this book, you'll recognize a lot of names, and learn a lot more about other talented artists whose names might not be household words. Among her friends and lovers:
Constantin Brancusi
Marc Chagall
Rene Clair
Jean Cocteau
Marcel Duchamp
Max Ernst
Tsuguharu Foujita (the most commercially successful artist at the time)
Ernest Hemingway
Man Ray
Henri Matisse
Joan Miro
Amedeo Modigliani
Pablo Picasso
Ezra Pound
Marcel Proust
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Diego Rivera
Erik Satie
Chaim Soutine
Gertrude Stein
The book actually covers a period from the late 1800's until the early 1930's. There are many more artists and personalities woven in and out of the story. It is a story of friends, art, parties and genius, but also of alcoholism, despair and suicide.
Kiki and Man Ray were lovers for eight years, but both had other lovers, and affairs after they broke up. Both before and after, she modeled for many of his masterpieces.
She wrote her memoirs "Kiki's Memoirs" in 1929. It was published in France with introductions by Fujita and Hemingway. It was banned in the United States.
She was beautiful. She was raunchy. She was a free spirit.
She lived life on her own terms.
If that appeals to you, so will this book. It is well written, with great illustrations. Many nudes.
Kiki sure was a most *interesting* person.
Posted by: keewee | May 28, 2006 at 09:52 AM
Kiki exemplified the spirit of the saying:
"Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls get to go everywhere."
Her large behind is very endearing, I must add.
Posted by: Reets | June 01, 2006 at 01:05 PM