My new article on AnOther Magazine's website is about the wonderful Kiki de Montparnasse!
She was the toast of Montparnasse at a time when the popular quarter in
the south of Paris welcomed penniless avant-garde artists and bohemian
characters. Her raven black garçonne bob, prominent nose and art deco
Cupid’s bow made her recognisable to one and all. Kiki de Montparnasse
was not particularly beautiful or elegant, but there was something
electric about her: “she was very wonderful to look at”, said Hemingway.
Soutine, Foujita, Gargallo and of course Man Ray must have agreed with
him, for they all asked her to pose for them. But Kiki de Montparnasse
was more than just an artist’s model.
Born Alice Ernestine Prin, a healthy country girl brought up by a
kindly and unshockable grandmother, Kiki de Montparnasse first arrived
in Paris in 1913, aged 12, to work as a baker’s apprentice. However,
five years later, the Armistice found her down on her luck, homeless,
roaming the streets of Paris and sleeping in a vagabond’s hut behind the
Gare Montparnasse. Refusing to become a prostitute (she had an
irrational fear of venereal disease) she would go to the Coupole and sit
there all da, sipping a six-cent café-crème wearing a black silk hat,
her most prized possession. It was there, beneath the mirrors that
multiplied the possibilities of seeing and being seen, amid the
cigarette smoke and the aromas of Pernod and hot chocolate, that she
filched croissants, made scenes and got artists to buy her drinks. She
would pose for them in exchange, soon building up friendships with
lovely Foujita, dirty Soutine or drunken Modigliani. She didn’t belong
to any clique but rather reveled in seducing everyone: surrealists,
cubists, futurists, Dadaists; and rubbed elbows with drunken sailors,
pimps, boxers and cocaine users on the terraces of the Dôme or the
Rotonde. She was famous for her generosity with her tears, with her
body, with her laughter, with her money whenever she had any.
In 1921 she met Man Ray and reluctantly accepted to pose for him, even
though she was weary of photography, especially the “lewd” kind. It was
love at first sight. They moved in together to a modern, luxurious
building on 31 bis rue Campagne Première. For Kiki de Montparnasse this
was a dream come true: perfumed with Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue, she would
entertain in her salon the greatest personalities of her time. Matisse,
Picasso, Joyce and Gertrude Stein all dropped in to enjoy her excellent
French cooking. She still posed for artists, always remaining silent,
never judging their work. She picked up cues from the very people she
modeled for and became an accomplished artist, but was devoid of
artistic ambition. She could even have been a movie star when, in 1923,
Paramount scheduled an appointment for her in New York. But, at the last
minute, she decided to go shopping instead. She would rather stay in
Paris, a city that was, in the words of Alice B. Toklas, “more
beautiful, vital and inextinguishable than ever”; a city where her own
life and the creating of her persona would become her works of art.
