Kiki de Montparnasse

Recently we visited the museum in Chatillon-sur-Seine in Burgundy. The temporary exhibition was about Kiki de Montparnasse (birth name Alice Prin). She was born in the town and lived there as a child. The exhibition was outstanding, a real credit to the museum. It evoked Kiki's time and place exceptionally well, with photographs, posters, paintings, a recreated Parisian cafe and several fascinating videos (one of interviews with people who knew her, one a wonderfully quirky animated biography - trailer is here).

Posters from Kiki's time.

Her mother was 19 and unmarried when Kiki was born in 1901. Her childhood was spent in poverty with her grandmother and it was not until she was 13 that she went to join her mother in Paris. Once Kiki had finished school at the age of 13 she was apprenticed to her mother, who was a linotype operator. This didn't last very long and she worked successively as a bookbinder, florist, bottlewasher and wielding a screwdriver manufacturing aeroplane wings. In 1917 she got a job working in a bakery. When she stood up for herself against her violent and bullying boss she was sacked.

Portraits of Kiki by Maurice Mendjizki.

Thus began her best known career, as a nude artists model. She wasn't entirely comfortable with it at first, and it caused a permanent rift with her mother, but it was a way she could put food on the table and be independent. She developed a close circle of friends, most of whom were artists and she blossomed into a marvellously self-assured and determinedly individualistic personality. One of those who supported her from very early on in this period of her life was the Belarusian painter Chaim Soutine (who has a connection to Champigny-sur-Veude, which is not far from where we live).

Posters from Kiki's time.

In 1918 she and the Polish painter Maurice Mendjizki* became lovers and she moved in with him. In the 1920s she posed for the Italian artist Modigliani and the Japanese artist Fujita. She was part of a group of creatives who were at their peak between the Wars. Her appearance was distinctive, with red painted lips, hair cut into a square bob, and copious kohl around her eyes. Her eyeshadow changed colour to match her dress and she shaved her eyebrows so she could redraw them in colours to suit her mood and outfit.

Kiki's portrait of Chaim Soutine.

In 1921 she and the American photographer Man Ray became a couple and she was his preferred model. He described her as 'irreproachable, from head to toe', and created the famous Violon d'Ingres image of her. Amongst their circle of friends were Louis Aragon, Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Ernest Hemmingway and Vaslav Nijinski. She herself became a portraitist and regularly exhibited.

In 1929 she became the mistress of the editor of Paris-Montparnasse magazine, Henri Broca, and wrote her memoirs. The book was banned in the United States, despite her excellent connections with influential Americans.

Le Violon d'Ingres by Man Ray, a photograph of Kiki's naked back, which has been developed with cutouts of violin f holes transforming her into the instrument.

By 1930 she was making her living as a singer in night clubs. There are those who say she was the only rival Edith Piaf was afraid of. But by this time she was drinking heavily and eating badly. Although she maintained a successful singing career throughout the decade her health was beginning to be compromised. When the Second World War broke out she fled Paris. On her return she was unrecognisable, a travesty of her former stylish self, overweight and wearing too much makeup. She died of complications from substance abuse in 1953.

It seems to me that she is the epitome of the dazzling star who burned bright then crashed to Earth. She was charismatic and much loved in her prime. Her friends really cared about her until the end. Having come from grinding rural poverty she had the strength and self belief to make a life for herself on her own terms and her use of makeup and fashion were the beginnings of a more general practice of adornment and self expression by women for decades. Her influence is much more widespread than people realise, and today she is all but forgotten.

*Mendjizki, who was Jewish, later married someone else and subsequently lost almost his entire family in the Holocaust. One of his sons was shot by the Nazis, but his other son lived until 2017, renowned as the youngest ever member of the French Resistance.