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My Own Magic: A Reappearing Act
Par Anna Kloots. 2023
Despite what appeared to be a glamorous existence full of globetrotting adventures, behind the scenes, Anna Kloots felt invisible in…
her own life. Consumed by a marriage that left no space for her own desires, she chose to reframe the failure of her marriage as an opportunity to begin again. Now, for every woman searching for her voice, Anna shares her story of starting over by trusting the magic that was always within.It was Anna Kloots&’s innate sense of adventure and love for the unknown that led her to move abroad, travel to eighty countries around the world, start a business, and marry a magician, all before her midtwenties. From the outside, her jet-setting lifestyle alongside her husband looked perfect. But as she explored deeper, and let each destination challenge, change, and shape her, Anna began to realize that perfection was just another illusion.Though she appeared to have all the freedom in the world, in reality, she was trapped inside a box, slowly disappearing. When her marriage ended, Anna decided to use her unhappy ending as a chance for a new beginning.Following Anna&’s extensive travels from the bustling streets of Jaipur to the canals of Venice to the desert of Dubai, My Own Magic is a true, coming-of-age story about a woman rediscovering the magic that was always inside her. Anna&’s memoir is proof that travel can transform you, inspire you, and even save you.Over the summer of 1821, a cash-strapped John James Audubon worked as a tutor at Oakley Plantation in Louisiana’s rural…
West Feliciana Parish. This move initiated a profound change in direction for the struggling artist. Oakley’s woods teemed with life, galvanizing Audubon to undertake one of the most extraordinary endeavors in the annals of art: a comprehensive pictorial record of America’s birds. That summer, Audubon began what would eventually become his four-volume opus, Birds of America.In A Summer of Birds, Danny Heitman recounts the season that shaped Audubon’s destiny, sorting facts from romance to give an intimate view of the world’s most famous bird artist. A new preface marks the two-hundredth anniversary of that eventful interlude, reflecting on Audubon’s enduring legacy among artists, aesthetes, and nature lovers in Louisiana and around the world.Audubon on Louisiana: Selected Writings of John James Audubon
Par Ben Forkner. 2018
Although we remember John James Audubon’s years in Louisiana primarily for the art he produced there, his writings reflect the…
profound impact the region made on him and his artistic vision, especially in his magnificent collection of paintings published as The Birds of America. In Audubon on Louisiana, Ben Forkner compiles and explains in depth Audubon’s essential writings on the region. Beginning in 1810 as Audubon arrives in the upper Louisiana Territory, and continuing as he moves into southern Louisiana ten years later (and eventually brings his wife, Lucy, to join him), Audubon’s journals, essays, and letters reveal his struggles to fill his portfolio with new watercolors, his discoveries throughout the region, and the transformative effect the area had on both his art and his life.Forkner provides a detailed introduction to Audubon’s private journal of 1820–21, the Louisiana Journal, to guide readers through this compelling document. Until now, the difficulty of comprehending Audubon’s rough English has often kept readers from fully appreciating the Journal’s significance. The volume also contains a dozen essays that Audubon penned about his experiences in Louisiana; most of these “episodes” he published in his Ornithological Biography, a massive five-volume written work that complements the visual art of Birds of America. Letters describing Audubon’s last voyage to Louisiana in 1837 followed by nine of his Louisiana bird biographies round out the collection. These original texts, augmented with Forkner’s commentary, form a magisterial work that illuminates the importance of Louisiana to Audubon’s life and art. Audubon on Louisiana deepens appreciation of one of the most significant artists—and nature writers—of the nineteenth century.The World Is a Book, Indeed: Writing, Reading, and Traveling
Par Peter LaSalle. 2020
The World Is a Book, Indeed chronicles in eleven rich personal essays the ongoing quest of award-winning writer Peter LaSalle…
to embark on offbeat, often startlingly revelatory literary travel. LaSalle spends a summer roaming the lesser-known quarters of Paris, haunted by the writing of the French surrealists. In Hanoi, he meets for beers with the editors—two military men—of the Army Literature and Arts Magazine while investigating Vietnam’s acknowledged great modern novel, Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War. Other pieces find LaSalle on a strange nighttime drive through the streets of sprawling São Paulo in search of landmarks associated with Brazilian modernist poetry, bouncing around Africa to interview writers there when very young, exploring Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges's memorable stay in Texas, and traveling to Istanbul, Lisbon, Tunis, and elsewhere, as he considers major writers amid the settings that produced their works. Deeply felt and replete with insight into literature and life itself, even capable of evoking valid mind leaps in its innovative approaches, this is a collection for readers who love books and want to learn more about the places they originated, presented by a well-traveled guide with an intimate voice and a gift for the essay form.The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Par Eric Weiner. 2008
Part travel memoir, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader across the globe…
to investigate not what happiness is, but WHERE it is.Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Qatar, awash in petrodollars, find joy in all that cash? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy?In a unique mix of travel, psychology, science and humor, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions.The Shores of Bohemia: A Cape Cod Story, 1910-1960
Par John Taylor Williams. 2021
An intimate portrait of a legendary generation of artists, writers, activists, and dreamers who created a utopia on the shores…
of Cape Cod during the first half of the twentieth century.Their names are iconic: Eugene O’Neill, Willem de Kooning, Josef and Anni Albers, Emma Goldman, Mary McCarthy, Edward Hopper, Walter Gropius—the list goes on and on. Scorning the devastation that industrialization had wrought on the nation’s workforce and culture in the early decades of the twentieth century, they gathered in the streets of Greenwich Village and on the beach - fronts of Cape Cod. They began as progressives but soon turned to socialism, then communism. They founded theaters, periodicals, and art schools. They formed editorial boards that met in beach shacks and performed radical new plays in a shanty on the docks, where they could see the ocean through cracks in the floor. They welcomed the tremendous wave of talent fleeing Europe in the 1930s. At the end of their era, in the 1960s, as the postwar economy boomed, they took shelter in liberalism when the anticapitalist movement fragmented into other causes. John Taylor “Ike” Williams, who married into the Cape’s artistic world and has spent half a century talking about and walking along its shores with these cultural and political luminaries, renders the twisting lives and careers of a generation of staggering American thinkers and creators. The Shores of Bohemia records a great set of shifts in American culture and the ideas and arguments fueled by drink, infidelity, and competition that made for a fifty-year conversation among intellectual leaders and creative revolutionaries. Together they found a community as they created some of the great works of the American Century. This is their story. Welcome to the party!Dr. Seuss's Horse Museum (Classic Seuss)
Par Dr Seuss. 2019
This #1 New York Times bestseller is the perfect gift for the young artist in your life! A never-before-published Dr. Seuss non-fiction…
book about creating and looking at art! Based on an unrhymed manuscript and sketches discovered in 2013, this book is like a visit to a museum—with a horse as your guide! Explore how different artists have seen horses, and maybe even find a new way of looking at them yourself. Discover full-color photographic art reproductions of pieces by Picasso, George Stubbs, Rosa Bonheur, Alexander Calder, Jacob Lawrence, Deborah Butterfield, Franz Marc, Jackson Pollock, and many others—all of which feature a horse! Young readers will find themselves delightfully transported by the engaging equines as they learn about the creative process and how to see art in new ways. Taking inspiration from Dr. Seuss&’s original sketches, acclaimed illustrator Andrew Joyner has created a look that is both subtly Seussian and wholly his own. His whimsical illustrations are combined throughout with &“real-life&” art. Cameo appearances by classic Dr. Seuss characters (among them the Cat in the Hat, the Grinch, and Horton the Elephant) make Dr. Seuss&’s Horse Museum a playful picture book that is totally unique. Ideal for home or classroom use, it encourages critical thinking and makes a great gift for Seuss fans, artists, and horse lovers of all ages. Publisher&’s Notes discuss the discovery of the manuscript and sketches, Dr. Seuss&’s interest in understanding modern art, the process of creating the book, and information about each of the artists and art reproductions in the book.Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma
Par Michael Peppiatt. 1999
Published in 1996, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma was the first in-depth study of the artist's life. It has…
not been superseded.In this substantially revised, updated edition - to coincide with the artist's centenary, which will be celebrated from autumn 2008 through summer 2009 - Peppiatt will incorporate confidential material Bacon gave him, which he did not include in the first edition. This valuable, first-hand information comes from the hundreds of conversations Bacon had with Peppiatt, often late into the night, over thirty years, particularly during the periods Bacon spent living and working in Paris. It includes insights into Bacon's intimate relationships, his artistic convictions and his general view of life, as well as his acerbic comments on his contemporaries.Peppiatt will draw on some of the fascinating information that has become available in the fifteen years since the artist died. Once jealously guarded by the artist himself, the contents of Bacon's studio can now be freely consulted; Peppiatt has had privileged access to these archives, and he will show how a number of recent discoveries - including wholly unexpected source material - have radically changed the way we look at Bacon's work. Similarly, his recent research into the artist's background - his tortured affair with the sadistic Peter Lacy in Tangier, for instance, and the baffling circumstances of his death in Madrid - will shed light on unexplored areas of Bacon's life and work. Peppiatt will also unveil new information from several people who knew Bacon intimately and who have never gone on record previously.Nature's Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World
Par Patrick Dean. 2023
A dynamic and fresh exploration of the naturalist Mark Catesby—who predated John James Audubon by nearly a century— and his influence on how…
we understand American wildlife.In 1722, Mark Catesby stepped ashore in Charles Town in the Carolina colony. Over the next four years, this young naturalist made history as he explored deep into America&’s natural wonders, collecting and drawing plants and animals which had never been seen back in the Old World. Nine years later Catesby produced his magnificent and groundbreaking book, The Natural History of Carolina, the first-ever illustrated account of American flora and fauna. In Nature&’s Messenger, acclaimed writer Patrick Dean follows Catesby from his youth as a landed gentleman in rural England to his early work as a naturalist and his adventurous travels. A pioneer in many ways, Catesby&’s careful attention to the knowledge of non-Europeans in America—the enslaved Africans and Native Americans who had their own sources of food and medicine from nature—set him apart from others of his time. Nature&’s Messenger takes us from the rice plantations of the Carolina Lowcountry to the bustling coffeehouses of 18th-century England, from the sun-drenched islands of the Bahamas to the austere meeting-rooms of London&’s Royal Society, then presided over by Isaac Newton. It was a time of discovery, of intellectual ferment, and of the rise of the British Empire. And there on history&’s leading edge, recording the extraordinary and often violent mingling of cultures as well as of nature, was Mark Catesby. Intensively researched and thrillingly told, Nature&’s Messenger will thrill fans of exploration and early American history as well as appeal to birdwatchers, botanists, and anyone fascinated by the natural world.Hell on Color, Sweet on Song: Jacob Wrey Mould and the Artful Beauty of Central Park
Par Francis R. Kowsky. 2023
Reveals new and previously unknown biographical material about an important figure in nineteenth-century American architecture and music.Jacob Wrey Mould is…
not a name that readily comes to mind when we think of New York City architecture. Yet he was one-third of the party responsible for the early development of the city’s Central Park. To this day, his sculptural reliefs, tile work, and structures in the Park enthrall visitors. Mould introduced High Victorian architecture to NYC, his fingerprint most pronounced in his striking and colorful ornamental designs and beautiful embellishments found in the carved decorations and mosaics at the Bethesda Terrace. Resurfacing the forgotten contributions of Mould, Hell on Color, Sweet on Song presents a study of this nineteenth-century American architect and musical genius.Jacob Wrey Mould, whose personal history included a tie to Africa, was born in London in 1825 and trained there as an architect before moving to New York in 1852. The following year, he received the commission to design All Souls Unitarian Church. Nicknamed “the Church of the Holy Zebra,” it was the first building in America to display the mix of colorful materials and medieval Italian inspiration that was characteristic of High Victorian Gothic architecture. In addition to being an architect and designer, Mould was an accomplished musician and prolific translator of opera librettos. Yet anxiety over money and resentment over lack of appreciation of his talents soured Mould’s spirit. Unsystematic, impractical, and immune from maturity, he displayed a singular indifference to the realities of architecture as a commercial enterprise. Despite his personal shortcomings, he influenced the design of some of NYC’s revered landmarks, including Sheepfold, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the City Hall Park fountain, and the Morningside Park promenade. From 1875 to 1879, he worked for Henry Meiggs, the “Yankee Pizarro,” in Lima, Peru.Resting on the foundation of Central Park docent Lucille Gordon’s heroic efforts to raise from obscurity one of the geniuses of American architecture and a significant contributor to the world of music in his time, Hell on Color, Sweet on Song sheds new light on a forgotten genius of American architecture and music.Funding for this book was provided by: Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan FundLife with Picasso
Par Carlton Lake, Françoise Gilot. 1964
Françoise Gilot's candid memoir remains the most revealing portrait of Picasso written, and gives fascinating insight into the intense and…
creative life shared by two modern artists.Françoise Gilot was in her early twenties when she met the sixty-one-year-old Pablo Picasso in 1943. Brought up in a well-to-do upper-middle-class family, who had sent her to Cambridge and the Sorbonne and hoped that she would go into law, the young woman defied their wishes and set her sights on being an artist. Her introduction to Picasso led to a friendship, a love affair, and a relationship of ten years, during which Gilot gave birth to Picasso’s two children, Paloma and Claude. Gilot was one of Picasso’s muses; she was also very much her own woman, determined to make herself into the remarkable painter she did indeed become.Life with Picasso, written with Carlton Lake and published in 1961, is about Picasso the artist and Picasso the man. We hear him talking about painting and sculpture, his life, his career, as well as other artists, both contemporaries and old masters. We glimpse Picasso in his many and volatile moods, dismissing his work, exultant over his work, entertaining his various superstitions, being an anxious father. But Life with Picasso is not only a portrait of a great artist at the height of his fame; it is also a picture of a talented young woman of exacting intelligence at the outset of her own notable career.Moderate Becoming Good Later: Sea Kayaking the Shipping Forecast
Par Katie Carr, Toby Carr. 2023
An exhilarating and deeply moving story of one man's attempt to sea kayak the areas of the Shipping Forecast, perfect…
for fans of The Salt Path and Attention All ShippingForeword by Charlie Connelly, author of Attention All ShippingThe Shipping Forecast has been described as the UK's national lullaby: a source of dependability and calm in our often chaotic world, it has charmed millions of listeners and aided generations of seafarers across the decades. No stranger to weathering a storm after living with a rare life-limiting condition and facing the death of his brother, avid kayaker Toby Carr set out to explore the areas of the Forecast.On a journey that took him to the harshest and most tranquil stretches of our sea, Toby found the real people, places and stories behind the familiar names and imagined environments of the well-loved BBC broadcast. From the wildness and peace of the sea, looking back at the land, Toby hoped to gain the strength and balance he knew nature could provide and to discover what anchors us to each other.Written by Toby's sister Katie from his extensive notes and recordings after his untimely death, Moderate Becoming Good Later is both an epic adventure - sometimes choppy, constantly moving - and a personal voyage of discovery that includes old friends and new, plenty of wildlife, and the ever-present sea.The life of pioneering photographer Barbara Ker-Seymer'I just called myself Ker-Seymer Photographs,' Barbara said. 'I didn't think it was necessary…
to have your sex displayed on the photographs.' Vivacious, sassy, out to have fun, Ker-Seymer was committed to independence.One of a handful of outstanding British photographers of her generation, Ker-Seymer's work defined a talented, forward-looking network of artists, dancers, writers, actors and musicians, all of whom flocked to her Bond Street studio. Among her sitters were Evelyn Waugh, Margot Fonteyn, Cyril Connolly, Jean Cocteau and Vita Sackville-West. Barbara Ker-Seymer (1905-1993) disdained lucrative 'society' portraits in favour of unfussy 'modern' images. Her work was widely admired by her peers, among them, Man Ray and Jean Cocteau. Her images as a gossip-column photojournalist for Harper's Bazaar were the go-to representations of the aristocracy and Bright Young Things at play. Yet as both a studio portraitist and a photojournalist, she broke with convention.Equally unconventional in her personal life, Ker-Seymer was prefigurative in the way she lived her life as a bisexual woman and in her contempt for racism, misogyny and homophobia. Fiercely independent, for much of her life she rejected the idea of family, preferring her wide set of creative friends, with the artist Edward Burra, ballet dancer William 'Billy' Chappell and choreographer Frederick Ashton at its core. Today, Ker-Seymer's photographs are known for whom they represent, rather than the face behind the camera, an irony underpinned by the misattribution of some of her most daring images to Cecil Beaton. Yet her intelligence, sparkle, wit and genius enabled her to link arms with the surrealists, the Bloomsbury Group, the Bright Young Things and, most gloriously, the worlds of theatre, cabaret and jazz. With unprecedented access to private archives and hitherto unseen material, Sarah Knights brings Barbara Ker-Seymer and her brilliant bohemian friends vividly to life.Praise for Sarah Knights' Bloomsbury's Outsider: A Life of David Garnett:'Perceptive... sympathetic, thorough and witty' Francesca Wade, Telegraph'Delightful read... exceedingly well-researched' DJ Taylor, Guardian'Magisterial biography' Roger Lewis, The Times'Wonderful' Claire Harman, Evening Standard 'Books of the Year'Yayoi Kusama (Lives of the Artists)
Par Robert Shore. 2021
'I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland' Yayoi KusamaNonagenarian Japanese artist is simultaneously one of the most famous and…
most mysterious artists on the planet. A wild child of the 1950s and 1960s, she emerged out of the international Fluxus movement to launch naked happenings in New York and went on to become a doyenne of that city's counter-cultural scene. In the early 1970s, she returned to Japan and by 1977 had checked herself in to a psychiatric hospital which has remained her home to this day. But, though she was removed from the world, she was definitely not in retirement. Her love and belief in the polka dot has given birth to some of the most surprising and inspiring installations and paintings of the last four decades - and made her exhibitions the most visited of any single living artist.The life of pioneering photographer Barbara Ker-Seymer'I just called myself Ker-Seymer Photographs,' Barbara said. 'I didn't think it was necessary…
to have your sex displayed on the photographs.' Vivacious, sassy, out to have fun, Ker-Seymer was committed to independence.One of a handful of outstanding British photographers of her generation, Ker-Seymer's work defined a talented, forward-looking network of artists, dancers, writers, actors and musicians, all of whom flocked to her Bond Street studio. Among her sitters were Evelyn Waugh, Margot Fonteyn, Cyril Connolly, Jean Cocteau and Vita Sackville-West. Barbara Ker-Seymer (1905-1993) disdained lucrative 'society' portraits in favour of unfussy 'modern' images. Her work was widely admired by her peers, among them, Man Ray and Jean Cocteau. Her images as a gossip-column photojournalist for Harper's Bazaar were the go-to representations of the aristocracy and Bright Young Things at play. Yet as both a studio portraitist and a photojournalist, she broke with convention.Equally unconventional in her personal life, Ker-Seymer was prefigurative in the way she lived her life as a bisexual woman and in her contempt for racism, misogyny and homophobia. Fiercely independent, for much of her life she rejected the idea of family, preferring her wide set of creative friends, with the artist Edward Burra, ballet dancer William 'Billy' Chappell and choreographer Frederick Ashton at its core. Today, Ker-Seymer's photographs are known for whom they represent, rather than the face behind the camera, an irony underpinned by the misattribution of some of her most daring images to Cecil Beaton. Yet her intelligence, sparkle, wit and genius enabled her to link arms with the surrealists, the Bloomsbury Group, the Bright Young Things and, most gloriously, the worlds of theatre, cabaret and jazz. With unprecedented access to private archives and hitherto unseen material, Sarah Knights brings Barbara Ker-Seymer and her brilliant bohemian friends vividly to life.Praise for Sarah Knights' Bloomsbury's Outsider: A Life of David Garnett:'Perceptive... sympathetic, thorough and witty' Francesca Wade, Telegraph'Delightful read... exceedingly well-researched' DJ Taylor, Guardian'Magisterial biography' Roger Lewis, The Times'Wonderful' Claire Harman, Evening Standard 'Books of the Year'Yayoi Kusama (Lives of the Artists)
Par Robert Shore. 2021
'I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland' Yayoi KusamaNonagenarian Japanese artist is simultaneously one of the most famous and…
most mysterious artists on the planet. A wild child of the 1950s and 1960s, she emerged out of the international Fluxus movement to launch naked happenings in New York and went on to become a doyenne of that city's counter-cultural scene. In the early 1970s, she returned to Japan and by 1977 had checked herself in to a psychiatric hospital which has remained her home to this day. But, though she was removed from the world, she was definitely not in retirement. Her love and belief in the polka dot has given birth to some of the most surprising and inspiring installations and paintings of the last four decades - and made her exhibitions the most visited of any single living artist.Interrogating Travel: Guidance from a Reluctant Tourist
Par Paul Lindholdt. 2023
Never in human history has travel been so accessible to so many. But—amid an escalating climate crisis that threatens the…
homes of vulnerable people across the world—has the human cost of trekking the globe become too high? Paul Lindholdt links firsthand narratives with research about the travel trade, telling stories of his reluctant voyages while arguing that carbon-intensive trips abroad may be offset if adventurers come to know and love the landscapes closer to home. Tourism may be the planet’s largest industry, but Interrogating Travel advises readers to stay mindful of the consequences of their journeys, whether visiting local getaways or some of Earth’s most remote locations.Unspeakable Awfulness: America Through the Eyes of European Travelers, 1865-1900
Par Kenneth D. Rose. 2013
The late nineteenth century was a golden age for European travel in the United States. For prosperous Europeans, a journey…
to America was a fresh alternative to the more familiar ‘Grand Tour’ of their own continent, promising encounters with a vast, wild landscape, and with people whose culture was similar enough to their own to be intelligible, yet different enough to be interesting. Their observations of America and its inhabitants provide a striking lens on this era of American history, and a fascinating glimpse into how the people of the past perceived one another. In Unspeakable Awfulness, Kenneth D. Rose gathers together a broad selection of the observations made by European travellers to the United States. European visitors remarked upon what they saw as a distinctly American approach to everything from class, politics, and race to language, food, and advertising. Their assessments of the ‘American character’ continue to echo today, and create a full portrait of late-nineteenth century America as seen through the eyes of its visitors. Including vivid travellers’ tales and plentiful illustrations, Unspeakable Awfulness is a rich resource that will be useful to students and appeal to anyone interested in travel history and narratives.Natural Light: The Art Of Adam Elsheimer And The Dawn Of Modern Science
Par Julian Bell. 2022
A brand-new perspective on early modern art and its relationship with nature as reflected in this moving account of overlooked…
artistic genius Adam Elsheimer, by an outstanding writer and critic. Seventeenth-century Europe swirled with conjectures and debates over what was real and what constituted “nature,” currents that would soon gather force to form modern science. Natural Light deliberates on the era’s uncertainties, as distilled in the work of long underappreciated artist Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610), a native of Frankfurt who settled in Rome and whose diminutive and mysterious narrative compositions related figures to landscape in new ways, projecting unfamiliar visions of space at a time when Caravaggio was polarizing audiences with his radical altarpieces and early modern scientists were starting to turn to the new “world system” of Galileo. His visual inventions influenced many famous artists—including Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Lorrain, and Nicolas Poussin. Julian Bell guides the reader through key Elsheimer artworks, examining the contexts behind them before exploring the new imaginative thoughts that opened up in their wake. He also explores the experiences of Elsheimer and other Northern artists in the literary, artistic, and scientific culture of 1600s Rome. Although his life was tragically short, Elsheimer’s legacy endured and prints of his work were widely spread throughout Europe, with his influence extending as far as the Indian subcontinent.Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love and Rivalry in 1920s Paris
Par Mark Braude. 2022
'Exuberantly entertaining' NYT Book Review'Mark Braude's writing and subject make this book irresistible, as was Kiki herself.' Jim Jarmusch'A delightful,…
marvelously readable, meticulously-researched romp of a book, Kiki Man Ray brings to life not just the kaleidoscopically talented Kiki herself, but the endlessly fascinating Montparnasse milieu over which she reigned.' Whitney Scharer, author of THE AGE OF LIGHTThough many have never heard her name, Alice Prin - Kiki de Montparnasse - was the icon of 1920s Paris. She captivated as a ground-breaking nightclub performer, wrote a bestselling memoir, sold out exhibitions of her paintings, and shared drinks and ideas with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim, and Marcel Duchamp. She also shepherded along the career of a then-unknown American photographer: Man Ray.Following Kiki in the years between 1921 and 1929, when she lived and worked with Man Ray, Kiki Man Ray charts their complicated entanglement and reveals how Man Ray - always the unabashed careerist - went on to become one of the most famous photographers of the twentieth century, enjoying wealth and prestige, while Kiki's legacy was lost.But this isn't a story of an overbearing male genius and his defeated muse. During the 1920s it was Kiki, not Man Ray, who was the brighter of the two rising stars and a powerful figure among the close-knit community of models, painters, writers and café wastrels who made their homes in gritty Montparnasse. Following the couple as they created art, struggled for power and competed for fame, Kiki Man Ray illuminates for the first time Kiki's seminal influence on the culture of 1920s Paris, and challenges ideas about artists and muses, and the lines separating the two.'Kiki de Montparnasse was more than a muse - she was a vivacious, independent woman whose talent and magnetism helped make Paris the center of the art world in the 1920s. In Mark Braude's riveting cultural history, the Queen of Montparnasse rises again. This is a lively and compassionate tribute to the chanteuse, model, and portraitist who held center stage in her life, and who inspired some of the finest Surrealist art of the twentieth century.' Heather Clark, author of Pulitzer Prize-finalist Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath