Patrick O'Connor
Cocteau’s Collar
Man Ray's Montparnasse
By Herbert R Lottman
Harry N Abrams 263pp £19.95
Alice Prin, known as Kiki de Montparnasse, died one day in 1953, on the little triangular place at the intersection of the Boulevard Montparnasse and the Boulevard Raspail, within sight of both the Café du Dôme and La Coupole. She had been painted and sculpted by some of the most famous names of the 1920s, but her image is immortalised above all in the photographs taken by her lover, Man Ray. In 1924 he had depicted her as Le Violon d’Ingres, her head swathed in a turban, her back painted with squiggles to suggest the shape of a violin. Unlike Man Ray and most of the others, Kiki never deserted Montparnasse, and she becomes one of the threads that hold this story together, a tale that has been told many times before – about the Dadaists and the Surrealists, those respectable-looking young men who set out to shock and change the world.
Man Ray (whose real name was Emmanuel Radnitsky) was born in Brooklyn, where his parents, first-generation Russian immigrants, had moved in the first decade of the twentieth century. He was twenty-one in 1911 when he met Alfred Stieglitz and saw the work of Picasso for the first time. In 1913,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk