Man Ray’s muse takes center stage
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. Or, if not that, then an equally striking image of her face resting on its side, perpendicular to an African mask.
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 new biography, “Kiki Man Ray,” cultural historian Mark Braude brings her vividly to life and argues that she deserves to be remembered as a significant cultural figure in her own right, “a reality star for surreal times.”
Prin was born out of wedlock in 1901 in a village in Burgundy, still a mark of shame in deeply Catholic provincial France. Raised by her grandmother, she had to forage for snails to get enough to eat. At 12, she moved to Paris to live with her mother, who disowned her a few years later for modeling in the nude for a sculptor. Even as a teenager, she had a knack for self-presentation, blackening her eyebrows with burnt matches and rubbing flower petals on her cheeks and lips for color.
By the time she met Man Ray in 1921, Kiki had already posed for a number of artists destined for greatness, including Amadeo Modigliani, who were drawn to her voluptuous figure and cupid’s bow lips. Eventually, she became an accomplished painter, experimental film star and popular cabaret performer. When she died in 1953 at age 51 after years of drug and alcohol abuse, Life magazine ran a threepage spread on her, but she was already fading into obscurity.
Braude argues for her restoration to the history of modern art. She “anticipated our moment by embracing the … idea of treating her life as an ongoing work of art … turning her daily problems and pleasures and those of her friends into an interconnected and ongoing story to be consumed across several media.” — Ann Levin, Associated Press
The seemingly senseless stabbing of a young girl by two of her school friends in the Waukesha, Wisconsin, woods in 2014 made international headlines when it became known that the perpetrators were under the sway of Slenderman, a fictional internet demon that they had become convinced was real.
But the lurid headlines of the stranger-thanfiction crime missed many crucial facts about the case — which author Kathleen Hale lays out in rigorous step-by-step detail that’s the result of seven years of research in “Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls.” For one, the girl that they stabbed survived.
Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, who were 12 when they committed the crime, found Slenderman online on a website called Creepypasta.com, a fanfiction site that combined amateur horror stories with altered photos and videos. Slenderman struck a chord with the girls, who became convinced they had to commit a human sacrifice and then find Slenderman in the woods to live with them.
Geyser had undiagnosed childhood schizophrenia and had seen colors and visions her whole life, so believing in Slenderman fit in with how she knew the world. Weier had a difficult home life and found an escape in Creepypasta and going along with Geyser’s visions. Together they became absorbed in a shared delusion, leading to tragic consequences.
The two were caught soon after the stabbing, and quickly confessed their crime. They wound their way for years through the legal system in Wisconsin. Eventually, they were both found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, and sentenced to lengthy terms at a mental health institute.
Hale’s compassionate look at the case is a compelling yet harrowing read that reveals how a seemingly innocent childhood friendship could lead to such a devastating outcome. — Mae Anderson, Associated Press