Word: kiki
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Ernest Hemingway said she was the only woman who, "as far as I know, never had a Room of Her Own." Her real name was Alice Prin, but she was known in Montparnasse as Kiki. She came from the province of Burgundy, where she had been, as she said, "one of six little love children." She arrived in Paris at the age of twelve, on the eve of World War I, and the Paris underworld drew her in. At 13: "My mother has some artificial geraniums on the mantelpiece; I swipe a petal every day to rouge my cheeks...
Hungry and cold in the streets, she was befriended by a streetwalker, and by a drug addict who introduced Kiki (aged 16) to cocaine. A pimp seduced her, beat her arid threw her out because she "wasn't good for anything." One night a girl friend told her that there were "nice suet cakes and tea to drink" at the house of a Russian living in the Cite Falguiére. The girls stood shivering on the doorstep, afraid to knock. A neighboring painter, as poor and as cold as themselves, but a man of talent, took them...
...best model I ever had . . . nice and patient"); so did the vivacious Comtesse Anne-Elisabeth de Noailles, who "gesticulated so much that one of her breasts slipped out of her blouse, so I painted her that way." In time the great and near-great began calling him Kiki, and whenever he gave a party, they flocked to it dressed to the teeth. Kiki himself liked to receive them in a sweater, and he served them nothing but sandwiches and plain water. His formula for giving a party-"Why go to the expense of serving them champagne, when they...
...Some people," says Van Dongen, "write their memoirs. I am painting them." To Paris critics, Kiki's memoirs were as fresh and bold as anything he ever...
...sharpest blades in 1920 Paris was a young Polish-born painter named Moise Kisling. He wore his hair in a fringe, would duel at the drop of a beret, threw strenuous parties in his shabby studios. "He's the swellest guy in the world," wrote Kiki, queen of the Montparnasse models, in her diary. Kisling returned the compliment by faithfully reproducing her generous curves in his solidly painted canvases. Last week Artist Kisling, now an energetic 60, was having his first Paris show in 15 years. To replace Kiki and his other Montparnasse models, he had called...