Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love and Rivalry in 1920’s Paris can be ordered online HERE.

Mark Braude is the author of three non-fiction books, Kiki Man Ray being his third. He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar, a visiting fellow at the American Library in Paris, and a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. He is currently based in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives with his family.

For those who haven’t yet listened to our episode on Kiki de Montparnasse, Kiki was an artist’s model, performer, painter, actress, and memoirist active in Paris during the roaring twenties. Over her lifetime Kiki became one of the most prolific art models in the history of western art, modeling for many of the best painters of her day, as well as the photographer Man Ray, with whom she shared an eight-year long relationship with. Over the course of their affair, Man Ray took hundreds of photographs of Kiki. Kiki played an integral role in the creation of each of these works, co-collaborating on them with Man Ray, despite receiving no official credit.

But Kiki was far more than just Man Ray’s muse. She was also an artist in her own right, and her creativity took many forms. Kiki was an accomplished painter, cabaret performer, and published her own autobiography when she was only twenty-eight years old. Though Kiki de Montparnasse fell into relative obscurity after her death, she deserves to be remembered as the visionary and independent woman she was; a woman who inspired masterpieces by the greatest artists of her age, who painted with unrestrained expression and sang with bravado, whose memoir gained international recognition, and whose free spirit came to symbolize an entire era of European history. 

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ArtMuse is produced by Kula Production Company.

Today’s episode was written by host Grace Anna.

There are accompanying images, resources and suggestions for further reading on the ArtMuse website and Instagram. 

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