Kiki de Montparnasse

This award-winning French graphic novel presents a story as vibrant and mesmerizing as its famed bohemian subject. Kiki de Montparnasse, born Alice Prin, starts life as a poor, uneducated illegitimate French country bumpkin, but upon moving to Paris’s iconic Left Bank in the 1910s finds that a bright, ambitious young woman who understands the power of her own beauty and sexuality can follow her own path. A muse to nearly every artist in Montparnasse—Utrillo, Modigliani, Fajita, and Picasso are among the many who pass through these pages—Kiki settles down with American photographer Man Ray, posing for his most famous photos. Although Kiki’s life as an actress, singer, artist’s model, and occasional artist herself is mostly a series of hooking up with more powerful and/or functional men who can support her, it can be argued that she was one of the first “emancipated” women of the era, following her own muse and making her own decisions. Alas, many of those decisions are bad ones toward the end, as she dies a forgotten, bloated alcoholic in 1953. Muller’s intimate art captures every bar brawl and tryst along that path, while Bouquet summarizes the eternal heartbreak of art and life: “An artist should really avoid alcohol and lasting relationships,” says Ray at one point. (May)