Overview

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. 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. 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.

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Reviews

[A] heady romp through the galleries and nightclubs of interwar France. -- Vogue Braude's exuberant, absorbing biography stands Kiki at the 'white-hot center' of 1920s Montparnasse, reclaiming her rightful place. -- Toronto Star 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 Exquisitely crafted...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

Author Information

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. Karen Cass began her acting career with the Footlights as an undergraduate at Cambridge. After graduating she completed three years of acting training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where she was awarded the Evelyn Laye Prize for Best Actress in a musical and was chosen to represent LAMDA in the William Poel Festival at the Royal National Theatre.

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