The model for Le Violon d’Ingres, Kiki, Queen of Montparnasse formerly known as Alice Prin, was the baddest biznatch to ever to hit Paris and she has a hell of a life story.

In fact, her biography is so intense that her memoir was banned in America for obscenity! Being an illegitimate child, her father didn’t acknowledge her and her mother couldn’t hang, so Alice (the nickname Kiki came later) was raised by her grandmother until she was 12 years old. Her education throughout her life was a bit spotty because as she claimed, her teacher hated poor people. But at the age of 12, her mother brought her to Paris. It wasn’t exactly the mother-daughter bonding experience that she imagined, though. Alice was forced to work first for a printer, binding copies of Kama Sutra (this will come up again later), and then for a baker who "’used to strip naked and make dirty jokes for my benefit.’" Obviously the concept of being a sex predator wasn’t a thing yet. But eventually she lost the job at the bakery for beating up the baker’s wife. She was kind of a boss, but also pretty dumb because her mother called her a whore and kicked her out of the house. C’est la vie.

After that fell through (that being her whole life), Alice began modeling for Chaïm Soutine who was the instigator of the famous nickname “Kiki.” She became a popular model for all the bohemian artists in Paris, despite her “big-boned” body type. She was known for 1) being really fun and 2) not giving two sh*ts about being naked in front of people despite the generally rigid modesty expectations of women at the time. Free the nipple, am I right?! I guess growing up reading Kama Sutra instead of nursery rhymes did a number on her.

Eventually Kiki began to model for Man Ray and the two were lovers for 6 years. She is the inspiration for a lot of his most famous works but their relationship wasn’t exactly easy. Kiki was always getting in fights, once ending up in jail. Man Ray had to bail her out claiming that she was emotionally unstable, which to be fair was kinda true.

Kiki was still the toast of Paris and people were completely enamored with her. She was seemingly unstoppable. She owned her own cabaret called Chez Kiki and almost made it to the big time in Hollywood, but bailed on her interview to go shopping. She drank a lot of alcohol and snorted a lot of cocaine. It was the high life right up until it wasn’t. Kiki pretty much dropped dead at the age of 52, probably from withdrawal.

Her legacy lives on in works of art like this, which was inspired by the artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The title, Le Violon d’Ingres is “a French idiom that means ‘hobby,’” which, when applied to Kiki is pretty awful. She always deserved better…