Not long after moving to Paris in 1921, American avant-garde artist Man Ray met and fell deeply in love with the model and performer Alice Prin, who went by the nickname Kiki de Montparnasse.

shot in 1924 by the American expatriate Man Ray (né Emmanuel Radnitzky), whose model and lover, Kiki de Montparnasse (1901-1953), was the doyenne of the post-World War I Parisian demimonde.

Mark Braude’s biography of a bohemian icon makes a case for Kiki de Montparnasse as an artist in her own right. Born Alice Prin, Kiki de Montparnasse came to embody the spirit of the Left Bank.

Mark Braude’s new biography, “Kiki Man Ray,” visits a place of perennial interest — Left Bank Paris in the 1920s — through the life of the singer, model, memoirist and muse. On this week ...

Mark Braude, Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris (2022). Courtesy of W.W. Norton. But a new biography of the woman born Alice Ernestine Prin argues that she was in many ways the ...

KIKI MAN RAY. By Mark Braude. W.W. Norton. 304 pages. $30. You may have seen the famous picture of her nude back marked with the sound holes of a violin, which recently sold for $12.4 million ...

Her name was Alice Prin, but she was better known in the bohemian world of 1920s Paris as Kiki de Montparnasse — and best known today as the muse of American surrealist artist Man Ray. In a splendid ...

Her name was Alice Prin, but she was better known in the bohemian world of 1920s Paris as Kiki de Montparnasse — and best known today as the muse of American surrealist artist Man Ray.

This cover image released by W.W. Norton shows Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris" by Mark Braude. (W.W. Norton via AP) ...