Alice Prin
Encyclopedia
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
singer, actress, memoirist
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
, and painter. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated, early 1920s culture of Paris.
Early life
Alice Prin was born in Châtillon-sur-SeineChâtillon-sur-Seine
Châtillon-sur-Seine is a commune of the Côte-d'Or department in eastern France.-Population:-Personalities:Châtillon-sur-Seine was the birthplace of:* Auguste Marmont, duke of Ragusa , Marshal of France...
, Côte d'Or
Côte-d'Or
Côte-d'Or is a department in the eastern part of France.- History :Côte-d'Or is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was formed from part of the former province of Burgundy.- Geography :...
. An illegitimate child, she was raised in abject poverty by her grandmother. At age twelve, she was sent to live with her mother in Paris in order to find work. She first worked in shops and bakeries, but by the age of fourteen, she was posing nude for sculptors
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, which created discord with her mother.
Notoriety begins
Adopting a single name, "Kiki", she became a fixture in the MontparnasseMontparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
social scene and a popular artist model, posing for dozens of artists, including Chaim Soutine
Chaim Soutine
Chaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....
, "Julian Mandel
Julian Mandel
"Julian Mandel" is the identity given to one of the best-known commercial photographers of female nudes of the early twentieth century...
" (a pseudonym), Tsuguharu Foujita
Tsuguharu Foujita
was a painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings.- Education :In 1910 when he was twenty-four years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music....
, Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia was a French painter, poet, and typographist, associated with both the Dada and Surrealist art movements.- Early life :...
, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Arno Breker
Arno Breker
Arno Breker was a German sculptor, best known for his public works in Nazi Germany, which were endorsed by the authorities as the antithesis of degenerate art....
, Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
, Per Krohg
Per Krohg
Per Lasson Krohg was a Norwegian artist. Per Krohg is most frequently associated with the mural he created for the United Nations Security Council Chamber, located in the United Nations building in New York City.-Biography:...
, Hermine David
Hérmine David
Hermine Lionette Cartan David was a French painter and the wife of Jules Pascin....
, Pablo Gargallo
Pablo Gargallo
Pablo Emilio Gargallo was a Spanish sculptor and painter.Born in Maella, Aragon, he moved to Barcelona, Catalonia, with his family in 1888, where he would begin his training in the arts. Gargallo developed a style of sculpture based on the creation of three-dimensional objects from pieces of flat...
, Mayo
Mayo
- Places :Ireland* County Mayo* Mayo * Mayo * Mayo * Mayo East * Mayo North...
, and Tono Salazar
Toño Salazar
Antonio "Toño" Salazar was a Salvadoran caricaturist, illustrator and diplomat. Born in Santa Tecla, in 1920 he went to study in Mexico on an art scholarship then in 1922 traveled to France to join the throng of artists and writers from around the world who were living, working, and learning in...
. Moise Kisling
Moise Kisling
Moise Kisling was a Polish painter.Born in Kraków, Austria-Hungary, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he was encouraged to travel to the center for artistic creativity in the early 20th century, Paris, France.In 1910, Kisling moved to Montmartre and a few years later to...
painted a portrait of Kiki titled Nu assis, one of his best known.
Her companion for most of the 1920s was Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, who made hundreds of portraits of her. She is the subject of some of his best-known images, including the notable surrealist image Le violon d'Ingres and Noire et blanche.
She appeared in nine short and often experimental films, including Fernand Léger's
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
Ballet mécanique
Ballet mécanique
Ballet Mécanique was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmmaker/artists Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is...
without any credit.
Artwork and autobiography
A painter in her own right, in 1927 Prin had a sold-out exhibition of her paintings at the Galerie au Sacre du Printemps in Paris. Signing her work with her chosen single name, Kiki, she usually noted the year. Her drawings and paintings comprise portraits, self-portraits, social activities, fanciful animals, and dreamy landscapes composed in a light, slightly uneven, expressionist style that is a reflection of her easy-going manner and boundless optimism.Her autobiography was published in 1929 as Kiki's Memoirs
Kiki's Memoirs
Kiki's Memoirs is a 1929 autobiography by Alice Prin , known as Kiki de Montparnasse; a model, artist, and actress working in Montparnasse, Paris in the first half of the twentieth century....
, with Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
and Tsuguharu Foujita
Tsuguharu Foujita
was a painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings.- Education :In 1910 when he was twenty-four years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music....
providing introductions. In 1930 the book was translated by Samuel Putnam
Samuel Putnam
Samuel Putnam was an American translator and scholar of Romance languages.His most famous work is his 1949 English translation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote...
and published in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
by Black Manikin Press, but it was immediately banned by the United States government. A copy of the first US edition was held in the section for banned books in the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
through the 1970s. However, the book had been reprinted under the title The Education of a Young Model throughout the 1950s and 1960s (eg, a 1954 edition by Bridgehead has the Hemingway Introduction and photos and illustrations by Mahlon Blaine). These editions were mainly put out by Samuel Roth
Samuel Roth
Samuel Roth was an American publisher and writer. He was the plaintiff in Roth v. United States , which was a key Supreme Court ruling on freedom of sexual expression...
. Taking advantage of the fact that the banning of the book meant it did not receive copyright protection in the U.S., Roth put out a series of supposedly copyrighted editions (which were never registered with the Library of Congress) which altered the text and added illustrations - line drawings and photographs - which were not by Prin. Editions published in and after 1955 include an extra 10 chapters supposedly written by Prin 23 years after the original book, including a visit to New York where she meets with Samuel Roth
Samuel Roth
Samuel Roth was an American publisher and writer. He was the plaintiff in Roth v. United States , which was a key Supreme Court ruling on freedom of sexual expression...
and Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
; none of this was true. The original autobiography finally saw a new translation and publication in 1996. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/SHE+%22NEVER+HAD+A+ROOM+OF+HER+OWN%22%3A+HEMINGWAY+AND+THE+NEW+EDITION+OF...-a058243541
Her music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
performances in black hose and garters included crowd-pleasing risqué songs, which were uninhibited, yet inoffensive. For a few years during the 1930s, she owned a Montparnasse cabaret, which she named Chez Kiki.
A symbol of bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
and creative Paris, at age of twenty-eight she was declared the Queen of Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
. Even during difficult times, she maintained her positive attitude, saying "all I need is an onion, a bit of bread, and a bottle of red [wine]; and I will always find somebody to offer me that."
She left Paris to avoid the occupying German army during World War Two, which entered the city in June 1940. Nazi officials had a reputation for intolerance toward the art and artists associated with Montparnasse that extended to all embracing its liberal lifestyle. Although some of the Nazi leaders secretly collected the new art flourishing in Paris, it was suppressed where ever they exerted control. Hitler is said to have hoped that his military would burn Paris to the ground. She never returned as a resident.
Death and legacy
Prin died in 1953 in Sanary-sur-MerSanary-sur-Mer
Sanary-sur-Mer is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.It is located from Toulon and from Marseille.-Overview:The seafront location was part of the commune of Ollioules...
, France at the age of fifty-one, apparently of complications of alcoholism or drug dependence. A large crowd of artists and fans attended her Paris funeral and followed the procession to her interment in the Cimetière du Montparnasse. Her tomb identifies her as "Kiki, 1901–1953, singer, actress, painter, Queen of Montparnasse." Tsuguharu Foujita
Tsuguharu Foujita
was a painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings.- Education :In 1910 when he was twenty-four years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music....
has said that, with Kiki, the glorious days of Montparnasse were buried forever.
Long after her death, Prin remains the embodiment of the outspokenness, audacity, and creativity that marked that period of life in Montparnasse. In 1989, biographers Billy Klüver and Julie Martin called her "one of the century's first truly independent women." In her honor, a daylily
Daylily
Daylily is the general nonscientific name of a species, hybrid or cultivar of the genus Hemerocallis . Daylily cultivar flowers are highly diverse in colour and form, as a result of hybridization efforts of gardening enthusiasts and professional horticulturalists...
has been named Kiki de Montparnasse.
Kiki was featured in a 3 page obituary in Life Magazine in the June 29, 1953 edition.
Filmography
- 1923 : L'InhumaineL'InhumaineL'Inhumaine is a 1924 French drama-science fiction film directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It was notable for its experimental techniques and for the collaboration of many leading practitioners in the decorative arts, architecture and music...
by Marcel L'HerbierMarcel L'HerbierMarcel L'Herbier, Légion d'honneur, was a French film-maker, who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued until the 1950s and he made more than 40 feature films in total... - 1923 : Le Retour à la RaisonLe Retour à la RaisonLe Retour à la Raison is a 1923 film directed by Man Ray. It consists of animated textures, Rayographs and the torso of Kiki of Montparnasse .-Sources:*Flicks - March 2001 ; Chris Dashiell -External links:* *...
by Man RayMan RayMan Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, short film - 1923 : Ballet MécaniqueBallet mécaniqueBallet Mécanique was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmmaker/artists Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is...
by Fernand LégerFernand LégerJoseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, short film - 1923 : Entr'acteEntr'acte (film)Entr'acte is a 1924 French short film directed by René Clair, which premiered as an entr'acte for the Ballets Suédois production Relâche at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Relâche is based on a book and with settings by Francis Picabia, produced by Rolf de Maré, and with choreography by...
by René ClairRené ClairRené Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
, short film - 1923 : La Galerie des Monstres by Jaque CatelainJaque CatelainJaque Catelain was a French actor who came to prominence in silent films of the 1920s, and who continued acting in films and on stage until the 1950s. He also wrote and directed two silent films himself, and he was a capable artist and musician. He had a close association with the director Marcel...
- 1926 : Emak-BakiaEmak-BakiaEmak-Bakia is a 1926 film directed by Man Ray. Subtitled as a cinépoéme, it features many filming techniques used by Man Ray, including Rayographs, double exposures, soft focus and ambiguous features.-Synopsis:...
by Man RayMan RayMan Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, short film - 1928 : L'Étoile de merL'Étoile de merL'Étoile de mer is a 1928 film directed by Man Ray. The film is based on a script by Robert Desnos and depicts a couple acting through scenes that are shot out of focus.-Synopsis:...
by Man RayMan RayMan Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal... - 1928 : Paris express or Souvenirs de Paris by Pierre Prévert et Marcel DuhamelMarcel DuhamelMarcel Duhamel was a French actor and screenwriter, founder of the Série noire publishing imprint.He played The Foreman in Jean Renoir's 1936 The Crime of Monsieur Lange....
, short film - 1930 : Le Capitaine jaune by Anders Wilhelm Sandberg
- 1933 : Cette vieille canaille by Anatol Litvak
Further reading
- Kiki de Montparnasse (2007); by Catel & Bocquet (in French) Bruxelles: Casterman
- Kiki of Montparnasse (1968); by Frederick Kohner (a novel) London: Cassell ISBN 978-0-304-93242-9
- Kiki: Reine de Montparnasse (1988); by Lou Mollgaard (in French) Paris: Laffont
- Kiki's Memoirs (1996) translation by Samuel Putnam (original ed. pub by J. Corti, Paris)
- Kiki's Paris (1989); by Klüver and Martin. (French translation – Paris: Flammarion)
- Kiki's Memoirs, 1930 (2006) translation by N. Semoniff (in Russian – published by Salamandra P.V.V., 2011)
- Kiki Souvenirs, 1929 (2005) translation by N. Semoniff (in Russian – published by Salamandra P.V.V., 2011)
- Kiki's Memoirs (2009) [Recuerdos recobrados] translation by José Pazó Espinosa (in Spanish – published by Nocturna)
External links
- Kiki de Montparnasse – Selected Works
- http://www.savasumanovic.org.rs