Alice Prin

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Alice Ernestine Prin (October 2, 1901 – April 29, 1953), was a French artists' model, nightclub singer, a cabaret or Café-chantant owner, actress, and painter known simply as, Kiki. She had several other affectionate titles, Reine de la Montparnasse, Queen of Montparnasse, Kiki de Montparnasse, and other similar nicknames. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated culture of Paris in the 1920s. Her biographers, Billy Kluver and Julie Martin, called her "one of the century's first truly independent women."

[edit] Biography and art

Alice Prin was born in Châtillon-sur-Seine, Côte d'Or, Burgundy, France. 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 be educated. By age fourteen, she was posing nude for sculptors, which created discord with her mother.

Alice Prin, who was known as, Kiki and Kiki of Montparnasse

Kiki became a fixture in the Montparnasse social scene and a popular artists' model, posing for dozens of artists, including Chaim Soutine, Tsuguharu Foujita, Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau, Alexander Calder, Per Krohg, Hermine David, Pablo Gargallo, Mayo, and Tono Salazar. Moise Kisling painted a portrait of Kiki titled, Nu assis, one of his best known.

Man Ray, who was her companion for most of the 1920s, made hundreds of portraits of her. She is the subject of some of his best known images, including Le Violon d'Ingres (a colloquialism in the art circles of Paris for a relaxing hobby) and Noire et blanche.

She had roles in nine films, including Fernand Léger's famous Ballet mécanique.

A capable painter in her own right, in 1927 Kiki had a sold-out exhibition of her paintings at Paris' Galerie au Sacre du Printemps. Her drawings and paintings comprise portraits and dreamy landscapes composed in a light, slightly uneven, expressionist style that is a reflection of her easy-going manner and boundless optimism. The signature she used on her work was simply, Kiki.

Ernest Hemingway and Tsuguharu Foujita provided the introduction for her 1929 memoirs. "Kiki's Memoirs" was published the following year in New York City by Black Manikin Press, but banned by the United States government. Kiki's Memoirs remained barred in the United States as late as the 1970s when it was still held in the section for banned books in the New York Public Library. Finally, in 1996, her book was translated into English and published.

Kiki's music hall performances in black hose and garters included crowd-pleasing risqué songs, which were both uninhibited, yet inoffensive. For a few years in the 1930s, she owned a Montparnasse cabaret once called the Oasis, which she renamed, Chez Kiki.

The symbol of bohemian and creative Paris, at age of twenty-eight she was declared Queen of Montparnasse. 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".

Kiki died in 1953 in Sanary-sur-Mer, France. A large crowd of artists and fans attended her funeral in Paris and followed the procession to her burial site in the Cimetière du Montparnasse. Foujita said that, with Kiki, they buried, forever, the glorious days of Montparnasse.

Long after her death, Kiki remains the embodiment of the outspokenness, audacity, and creativity that marked this period of Montparnasse. In her honor, a daylily was named, Kiki de Montparnasse.