KIKI.

£5,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Les Souvenirs de Kiki. First edition, presentation copy of the deluxe issue, inscribed by the author on the half-title to Jean Cocteau. This is number 56 of 250 copies on papier couché mat.Kiki's inscription reads, in French, "To my great friend Jean Cocteau, one of the Enfants Terribles, all my admiration and even my love. The snake is well, see you soon, kind regards from Kiki, 1929", with a surreal illustration of a disembodied woman, a snake, and a ship.Shortly after Cocteau's arrival in Paris in 1922, Man Ray photographed him in the presence of Kiki. They became close friends, spending late nights at Cocteau's bar the Boeuf sur le Toit, where Kiki occasionally performed. They were together in Villefranche-sur-Mer while Cocteau recovered from the death of his lover, Raymond Radiguet: "We met every night at the little hotel bar where we enjoyed ourselves watching the sailors and prostitutes", Kiki recalled (quoted in Bocquet & Muller, p. 405). Kiki's abstract illustration in this copy may allude to their time by sea. Alice Ernestine Prin, known widely as Kiki, was the "Queen of Montparnasse". An artist, nightclub singer, and actress, she was the favoured model and muse of the Parisian expatriate community in the 1920s. She worked with Modigliani, Kisling, Soutine, Picabia, Picasso, and particularly Man Ray, with whom she had an intense eight-year love affair. Souvenirs is her candid account of a star-studded life at the centre of Paris's artistic circles. It is introduced

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