Pinup History Part 7: Kiki de Montparnasse

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Pinup History Part 7: Kiki de Montparnasse

Paris has long been the trend setting epicenter of western society. For centuries it has attracted and nurtured the creative minds of artists and thinkers whose various influences on culture, fashion and art persist to this day. One of the most fabulous of the artistic Parisian movements was born in Montparnasse at the beginning of the 20th century.Between 1910 and the start of WWII, artists from around the globe migrated to the Montparnasse district in Paris to take advantage of the intellectual community emerging there. A gritty bohemian attitude and romantic embrace of lower class status defined Montparnasse as the counterpart of Montmartre, the previous generation’s civilized artistic hub frequented by the likes of Manet and Degas. In comparison, Montparnasse was a poor man’s world where penniless eccentrics living in communes passed the night away conversing at cafes and trading paintings or poems for wine at the music halls. Members of this group included writers, artists, painters, performers and musicians such as Pablo Picasso, Josephine Baker, Jean Cocteau, Marc Chagall, Ezra Pound, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Jean Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, Henry Miller and Gertrude Stein who christened the group “The Lost Generation.”

Kiki de Montparnasse singing in a nightclub, 1923.

This grungy, on the fritz way of life became emblematic of the young people of les Années Folle (the Crazy Years) that before long it made its way across the Atlantic into American popular culture. Between 1921 and 1924 the number of Americans in Paris shot from 6,000 to 30,000. Many of these new comers were not cash strapped artists, rather, they were members of the upper class attracted to the bohemian lifestyle Montparnasse offered. The presence of a social elite in the counterculture hot spot legitimized the uninhibited goings-on of the scene and transformed an underground movement into a world wide phenomenon.

If a single person can epitomize an era, then Alice Prin aka Kiki, Queen of Montparnasse, represents this moment in Paris. Kiki was more than just a model or performer, and while she acted on the stage, sang in the music halls, painted, posed and wrote her own memoirs, her story encompasses so much more than her work would suggest. Kiki’s wild and liberated personality carved out a niche for women at a time when they were expected to simply be lovely and proper. Her impetuous nature worked against the traditional ideals of the female role and the modern woman has plenty to thank her for.

Kiki in a 1920 erotic French postcard.

After a destitute childhood in the east of France, an impoverished Prin came to Paris to live with her estranged mother. As young as 14 she began taking jobs as an artist’s model to earn her own living. Taking the name Kiki, she became a highly desired model, posing for a handful of the era’s most revered artists.

Le Violon d’ Ingres by Man Ray, 1924.

Kiki has been best and most frequently immortalized by the American photographer Man Ray. The avant-garde artist fell in love with her shortly after moving to Paris in 1920, and they were companions for nearly six years. During this time they collaborated and produced a number of stunning portraits, surrealist works and experimental films. It is Man Ray’s images that seem to capture her mysterious intrigue at its finest.

Above, Kiki in Man Ray’s Apartment, rue de la Condamine, 1921. Middle, Kiki With African Mask, 1926. Below, Kiki another Man Ray portrait, 1924.

While her work has historically been acknowledged as artistic in nature, Kiki can be viewed as an forerunner to the pinup star. Her provocative images and extraordinary persona made her a celebrity of the social scene and she was quickly recognized as a Montparnasse icon. Kiki’s vampish looks and sharp bobbed hair cut became her signature.

A 1924 Man Ray illustration of Kiki.

In addition to her work as a muse and model Kiki also opened her own cabaret known as Chez Kiki, and in 1927 had a sold-out exhibitions. Below is one of her own untitled paintings.

In 1929 Kiki published her memoirs with introductions by contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and artist Tsuguharu Foujita. Never the wallflower, Kiki’s bawdy autobiography was immediately placed on the list of banned books in the US where it remained until the 1970s. When the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940 Kiki fled her beloved city, never to return as a resident. Her death in 1953 from complications of alcohol and drug addiction marked the true end of an era, and as her colleague Tsuguharu Foujita said, “With Kiki, the glorious days of Montparnasse were buried forever.”

And yet her legacy lives on. She has been called one of the century’s first truly independent women and even now, decades after her death, Kiki continues to represent the bold and liberated creativity that defined the Montparnasse epoch.

Above, Kiki in an experimental Man Ray and Fernand Leger film.

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