The Lost Queen of Montparnasse

I think there may be revenge porn currently on display at the Pompidou.

Man Ray, Le violon d’Ingrès, 1924.

A friend of mine and I have a saying that we’d bandy about when either of us would fall a little too hard for an artist, when we’d start to lose sight of the forest for the trees in a creative relationship: “muses get fucked.” 

By that, we’d say it to remind each other that more often than not, the women immortalized, glamorized and upheld for the simple act of inspiring men to create art get screwed over literally and figuratively; that these women are commonly lost to time and discarded when their existence no longer provides their male artist partners with creative sustenance. 

The Centre Pompidou has just opened a spectacular, block-busting retrospective of the Surrealist movement to commemorate its centennial birthday. I, along with two close friends, visited on what we thought would be a quiet weekday at lunch time – only to find it packed to the gills and impossible to navigate, it was so crowded. The Surrealist movement without doubt continues to dominate the imaginations of consumers of culture, from the most casual museum-goer to passionate devotees of the writings of its founder, André Breton. 

The exhibition is dizzying in its size and scale; it is structured like a labyrinth, with an entrance that reproduces the spectacular ‘hellmouth’ that once greeted patrons of the Cabaret d’Enfer in Montmartre, above which Breton lived. There are dozens upon dozens of pieces of art that are instantly recognizable in their importance to the history of art, and the history of the 20th century. In many ways, it’s an embarrassment of riches. 

One of the rooms in the exhibition is titled “Les larmes d’Eros” (“The Tears of Eros”). As it suggests, it is a room filled with many beautiful and thoughtful pieces evoking sex and love; a flier stating “Si vous aimez L’AMOUR vous aimerez SURREALISME” (“if you love love you will love Surrealism”) is displayed here (and on many pieces of gift shop merch.) One of these instantly recognizable pieces is located here: Man Ray’s Le violon d’Ingrès, the iconic photograph of a nude woman with the f-holes of a violin painted on her pack, the ultimate example of Surrealist photography. 

However, in a shadow box just behind Le violon is another Man Ray, its inclusion in the exhibition I found to be at best surprising, and at worst unsettling, considering the murky circumstances behind its release. Photographed in extreme close-up is a penis penetrating a vagina: a couple is making love. The photograph appeared as one of a series of four, each marking a season of the year. The one in the Pompidou exhibition marks ‘Summer’. 

It is widely accepted and believed – based on identifying information about both of their bodies, although the lips wrapped around the penis in the photograph for ‘Autumn’ are the most readily recognizable trait of either person – that the couple in the photo series is Man Ray and Kiki de Montparnasse, his muse and model. She appeared in his most iconic and important work, and their partnership is the stuff of legend today. At the time, she was known as the ‘Queen of Montparnasse’, and he was unknown. Their relationship was fruitful and tumultuous, lasting throughout most of the 1920s. 

Although it is unclear when exactly these photos were taken, it is known that they appeared in 1929, the same year that this series of photographs were published in the special Surrealist-edited edition of the literary magazine Variétés. It was also the year that Kiki de Montparnasse and Man Ray separated.