Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris

by Mark Braude

Overview

One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022
One of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2022
One of ArtNet's Art Books They Couldn’t Put Down in 2022
One of Harper Bazaar’s Top 100 in 2022

A dazzling portrait of Paris’s forgotten artist and cabaret star, whose incandescent life asks us to see the history of modern art in new ways.

In freewheeling 1920s Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse captivated as a nightclub performer, sold out gallery showings of her paintings, starred in Surrealist films, and shared drinks and ideas with the likes of Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp. Her best-selling memoir—featuring an introduction by Ernest Hemingway—made front-page news in France and was immediately banned in America. All before she turned thirty.

Kiki was once the symbol of bohemian Paris. But if she is remembered today, it is only for posing for several now-celebrated male artists, including Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Calder, and especially photographer Man Ray. Why has Man Ray’s legacy endured while Kiki has become a footnote?

Kiki and Man Ray met in 1921 during a chance encounter at a café. What followed was an explosive decade-long connection, both professional and romantic, during which the couple grew and experimented as artists, competed for fame, and created many of the shocking images that cemented Man Ray’s reputation as one of the great artists of the modern era. The works they made together, including the Surrealist icons Le Violon d’Ingres and Noire et blanche, now set records at auction.

Charting their volatile relationship, award-winning historian Mark Braude illuminates for the first time Kiki’s seminal influence not only on Man Ray’s art, but on the culture of 1920s Paris and beyond. As provocative and magnetically irresistible as Kiki herself, Kiki Man Ray is the story of an exceptional life that will challenge ideas about artists and muses—and the lines separating the two.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324006015
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/09/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	86,156
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Mark Braude is a cultural historian and the author of Kiki Man Ray, The Invisible Emperor, and Making Monte Carlo. He has been a visiting fellow at the American Library in Paris, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar, and the recipient of a Silvers Grant. He lives in Vancouver with his family.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Jockey, Summer 1925, Evening 1

1 Old Songs Sung from a Marble Tabletop 5

2 A Café Isn't a Church 33

3 See the Disappearing Boy 37

4 Sessions 63

5 Grand Hôtel 67

6 All Tomorrow's Parties 77

7 Waking Dream Séance 90

8 An Italian Heir, a French Novelist, a Japanese Painter, and an American Collector 95

9 A Dada Dust-Up 102

10 A Sailing and Several Stories 107

11 She Will Be the Actor Too 112

12 The Interpretation of Dreams 116

13 Into the Light 121

14 Come Closer 138

15 Going Away 145

16 Kiki with African Mask 157

17 Leave Me Alone 164

18 The Years of Madness 178

19 She Became Restless 183

20 Don't Hesitate! Come to Montparnasse! 193

21 1929 199

22 Queen of the Underground 202

23 The Path of Duty 207

24 When I Get the Blues, I Change Eras 223

25 A Winter and a Spring 245

Epilogue: Memories and Photographs 249

Acknowledgments 257

Notes 259

Index 283

Editorial Reviews

"Spirited and thoroughly researched…Braude's colourful evocation captures the heady atmosphere of a Paris still traumatized by the First World War."

Times Literary Supplement (UK) - Elza Adamowicz

"With vibrant prose as beguiling as Kiki herself…Braude's exuberant, absorbing biography stands Kiki at the 'white-hot center' of 1920s Montparnasse, reclaiming her rightful place."

Toronto Star - Janet Somerville

"If the only 'Kiki de Montparnasse' you are aware of is a lingerie brand, please check out this top-notch, highly readable nonfiction from cultural historian Mark Braude right now."

A.V. Club - Cat Auer

"A delightful, marvelously readable, meticulously researched romp of a book, Kiki Man Ray brings to life not just the kaleidoscopically talented Kiki herself, but the endlessly fascinating Montparnasse milieu over which she reigned."

Whitney Scharer

"Kiki de Montparnasse was more than a muse—she was a vivacious, independent woman whose talent and magnetism helped make Paris the center of the art world in the 1920s. In Mark Braude’s riveting cultural history, the Queen of Montparnasse rises again. This is a lively and compassionate tribute to the chanteuse, model, and portraitist who held center stage in her life, and who inspired some of the finest Surrealist art of the twentieth century."

Heather Clark

"[An] exuberantly entertaining biography."

New York Times Book Review - Joanna Scutts

"Exquisitely crafted…[S]harp and succinct…Kiki Man Ray rescues its protagonist from the dustbin of history and advocates eloquently for the vitality and importance of the world she helped to forge."

Wall Street Journal - Hamilton Cain

"[An] affectionate biography…As irresistible as it is overdue."

Chicago Review of Books

"Splendid…Braude brings [Kiki de Montparnasse] vividly to life and argues that she deserves to be remembered as a significant cultural figure in her own right."

Associated Press - Ann Levin

"Absorbing and insightful…[Braude] has written a biography worthy of [Kiki de Montparnasse], alive with anecdote and incident…You just become so glad to know her."

Boston Globe - Charles Finch

"Man Ray captured 1920s Paris in his photographs, especially those of a singular muse: Kiki de Montparnasse, a hostess, a celebrity, a cabaret performer, a woman whose bawdy, heartfelt songs were the pulse of Paris. Mark Braude turns the tables—and the lens—and gives us a unique portrait: Man Ray from the perspective of that celebrated muse and her ephemeral art of performance."

Tilar J. Mazzeo

"[A] comprehensive page-turner."

Departures Magazine - Sloane Crosley

"Kiki de Montparnasse—model, muse, artist—is the sole realist in a room of Surrealists. Unafraid of contradiction, she lived the fast life in the stillness of a pose, the intimacy of a public dream. Beautifully written, with a light touch and a wise eye, Mark Braude’s Kiki Man Ray arranges the elements of Kiki’s life, letting radiant patterns emerge."

Alexander Nemerov

"Braude’s biography argues that the pair’s long love affair was mutually galvanizing, and that Kiki was not just a muse but an artist in her own right."

The New Yorker

"Kiki Man Ray is a thoroughly researched and gracefully written life of the (until now) underestimated model, performer, painter, actress, and influencer known as Kiki de Montparnasse. Mark Braude’s biography brings her out of the wings and sets her firmly center stage in this evocative portrait of artistic life in the Paris of the 1920s."

Carolyn Burke

"Finally, a detailed and entertaining account of Alice Prin, a/k/a Kiki de Montparnasse, and her artistic and romantic relationship with Man Ray. Best known as a popular (and usually nude) artists’ model, Kiki was a singer and performer, a painter, a writer, and the central female instigator for the avant-garde demimonde of Paris in the 1920s. Mark Braude’s writing and subject make this book irresistible, as was Kiki herself."

Jim Jarmusch

"[A] heady romp through the galleries and nightclubs of interwar France."

Vogue

03/01/2022

With Animal Joy, poet/psychoanalyst Alsadir, a National Book Critics Circle finalist for the collection Fourth Person Singular, gets serious about studying the importance of laughter (30,000-copy first printing). Long-listed for the National Book Award and a Granta Best of Young American Novelists, Ball was inspired by French writer/artist Édouard Levé's memoir (written at age 39) to offer his own frank Autoportrait in his 39th year. In 1920s Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse was a model, muse, and friend to cultural greats and an artist, cabaret star, and driving force in her own right, as Braude (The Invisible Emperor) highlights in Kiki Man Ray. With Eliot After "The Waste Land," award-winning scholar/poet Crawford follows up his highly regarded Young Eliot (10,000-copy first printing). Standing as both memoir and memorial, Black Folk Could Fly is a first selection of personal nonfiction from the late author/mentor Kenan, whose award-winning works powerfully communicate his experience of being Black, gay, and Southern. Lowell's Memoirs collects the complete autobiographical prose of the great poet, including unpublished early work (10,000-copy first printing). What is home but A Place in the World, and Tuscany celebrant Mayes's new book explores what home really means in all its variations. As Morris explains in her first book of nonfiction, she came to the writing career launched with the multi-million-copy best-selling The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Listening Well (50,000-copy first printing). Composer of the Tony-nominated musical Once Upon a Mattress, author of the novel Freaky Friday and the follow-up screenplay, and chair of the Juilliard School, Rodgers has a lot more to discuss in Shy than being the daughter of Richard Rodgers (25,000-copy first printing). Addressed to Wohl's brother Bobby, who died in 1965, As It Turns Out reconstructs the life of their sister, the iconic actress/model Edie Sedgwick made famous by Andy Warhol (30,000-copy first printing).

Library Journal

2022-05-28
A spotlight on an artist’s muse.

In a brisk chronicle of Paris between the wars, cultural historian Braude features photographer, filmmaker, and painter Man Ray (1890-1976), born Emmanuel Radnitzky, and chanteuse, painter, and model Kiki, born Alice Ernestine Prin (1901-1953). Both Man Ray, a Jewish New Yorker, and Kiki, who grew up poor in Burgundy, came to Paris to reinvent themselves and fulfill their dreams: Kiki’s, “of falling in love with a poet, painter, or actor”; Man Ray’s, to be recognized as a painter. At 16, Kiki took to frequenting the Rotonde, where she met artists who invited her to model. Among them was Maurice Mendjizky, who became her lover and gave her the nickname Kiki—“a bit of slang,” Braude notes, “to describe all sorts of things: chicken giblets; someone’s neck (usually strangled or hanged); a cock’s crow; having a chat; having sex.” Alice eagerly adopted it. A popular model, she sat for Modigliani, Soutine, and, in 1921, for newly arrived Man Ray. In New York, he had been befriended by iconoclast Marcel Duchamp and eminent photographer Arthur Stieglitz, who had seen the Armory Show and came away astonished. Painting intently in Paris, Man Ray supported himself by taking portrait photographs of the rich and famous, including Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and Braque. Being photographed by Man Ray, Sylvia Beach remarked, “meant you rated as someone.” His involvement with Dadaists and surrealists inspired his innovations in photography and film, which soon eclipsed painting as his primary artistic focus. He may have been jealous, Braude speculates, of the praise Kiki garnered for her own paintings and the acclaim she received for her nightclub performances. During their seven-year affair, she served as Man Ray’s muse as well as caretaker; but “her physical presence, her erotic charms, her joyfulness, and her mental quickness” made her a vibrant force in a colorful world—and the heart of Braude’s history.

A rich, affectionate look at bohemian Paris.

Kirkus Reviews