Kiki de Montparnasse: Je Me Drouge

Man Ray, Le Violon D’Ingres, 1924. Kiki is the model.

In the preface to the 1929 book Kiki's Memoirs, Ernest Hemingway wrote, "She dominated the era of Montparnasse more than Queen Victoria ever dominated the Victorian era." He was describing the woman known Kiki de Montparnasse, a muse, chanteuse, painter, actress, and cultural icon like no other. 

Born Alice Prin in 1901 to an impoverished single mother in Paris, she was required to work menial jobs from the age of 12 at places like print shops and shoe factories. Finding joy in self decoration, she "would crumble a petal from her mother's fake geraniums to give color to her cheeks and was fired from a nasty job at a bakery because she darkened her eyebrows with burnt matchsticks." (Source.)

Uninhibited by posing in the nude, she was determined to make a living as an artists' model while still in her teens, which caused her mother to turn her out of the house. The proprietress of Rosalie's restaurant in the Montparnasse district of Paris took pity on the young Alice, and often fed her. Rosalie's or La Rotonde may be the place where Modigliani, one of dozens of artists who painted or sculpted portraits of Kiki, paid his bill by slipping Futurist painter Gino Severini a chunk of hashish. (Source: Modigliani: A Life by Meryle Secrest, p. 106). 

In 1921, Kiki began an eight-year affair and artistic collaboration with the photographer Man Ray, during which time he influenced her style and took hundreds of portraits of her, including the iconic surrealist image Le Violon d'Ingres (Ingres' Violin) and Noire et blanche (Black and White). She also acted in experimental films shot by Man Ray. 

With a distinctive pointed-nose profile, Kiki also possessed "an extraordinary complexion which you could put makeup on in any form, and she did, too," said Lee Miller, Man Ray's subsequent collaborator and lover. "She was absolutely a gazelle," Miller said. (Source: Kiki Man Ray by Mark Braude, p. 229). "She had the short bobbed hair and unconventional look and really an energy, I think that people just really competed to capture," her biographer Mark Braude told The Octavian. "The bob and that whole fringe cut became ubiquitous by the end of the '20s. But when she started in 1921, 1922, that was actually a dangerous thing." (Kind of reminds me of when Tokin' Woman Patti Smith invented the shag haircut on herself and soon everyone copied her style.)

Kees van Dongen, Portrait of a Woman with a Cigarette

(Kiki de Montparnasse) ca. 1922-1924,

JE CONNAIS LA DROUGE

In Kiki's memoir, illustrated with her portraits and her own drawings, she tells of her introduction to cocaine while still a teenager (and a virgin). In a chapter titled, "Je Connais La Drogue" (I Know Drugs) she writes: 

"A sculptor for whom I pose entrusts me with an errand to run on the Champs-Élysées. I have to deliver a statuette to a gentleman of high importance. But he warns me that I must not be frightened by what I will see and above all, if I see money lying around not to worry about it."

Opening the door at the address where she is sent is a man of 40 years who "has the face of a bon vivant and a nose as if he had a bad cold!" He takes her on a tour of the apartment where, "Before letting me into another, darker room, he demands that I undress and put on a beautiful Chinese dress, white silk socks and golden slippers. In this room, all the wonders are gathered: the most beautiful collections of butterflies, lace, carpets, shawls. It's enough to give you a stiff neck. I want to see it all at once! It's magical."

She then writes, "I had noticed that from time to time he opened a pretty gold box from which he took, with a very small gold shovel, a pinch of white powder that he put in his nose; immediately afterwards he became very eloquent and I listened to him open-mouthed! 

"I took advantage of a moment when his back was turned to take a pinch of it myself and sniffed it. A while later, I felt very light; I was no longer thinking about anything. Life seemed beautiful... beautiful!"

Tamara de Lempicka: Surviving in Style

Tamara de Lempicka, "Young Woman in Green" (1931)

Just opened in San Francisco at the De Young museum: A retrospective of the work and life of Polish-born artist Tamara de Lempicka, the first exhibition of its kind in the US. 

Born Tamara Rosa Hurwitz, either in Warsaw or St. Petersburg to a family of Polish Jewish elites that encouraged her artistic interest with a tour of Italy. She married Tadeusz Lempicki in 1916, just before the October Revolution of the following year sent them fleeing Russia to Paris. Using the feminine declension of her husband's surname, Lampicka enrolled at free academies in the artistic community of Montparnasse, and began a lesbian affair with poet Ira Perrot, the subject of her first portraits. She began exhibiting at the Salon des Independants, held annually in Paris, under the masculine name Lempitzsky.

The timeline of Lempicka's life at the exhibit says that in 1922, "Tadeusz grows intolerant of his wife's affairs, cocaine use, late nights spent at clubs followed by valerian-induced sleep, and long work sessions listening to Richard Wagner at full volume." The couple divorced the year she painted a portrait of him, wherein his left hand (where his wedding ring would be worn) is purposely left unfinished. Lempicka picked up her paintbrush to support herself and her child,  exhibiting in the United States, and with the Société des Femmes Artistes Modernes in Paris. She subsequently married Baron Raoul Kuffner, becoming Baroness Kuffner.

Molly Tuttle, Brandy Clark and Patti Smith Rock Hardly Strictly Blue-Grass

The Annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass free music festival, held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park through the generosity of investment banker/banjo player Warren Hellman, tends to have its musical acts comment on being in the city once called Yerba Buena. 

In 2023, Rufus Wainwright opened his set with his song "Beautiful Child" by saying it was written on acid and mushrooms on Yoko Ono's farm, gesturing to the crowd and saying, "so, it feels proper." 

Very Important Pothead Kris Kristofferson, who died just before this year's festival, dueted with Merle Haggard on his satirical song "Oakie from Muskogee" at the 2011 fest. "I think when someone's 70 years old, they ought to be able to smoke anything they want to smoke," Haggard began, bringing cheers from the crowd for the verse, "We still wear our hair grow long and shaggy / like the people in San Francisco do." Kristofferson added his own clever verse, which he sang with a wry smile: "We don't shoot that deadly marijuana / We get drunk like God wants us to do." 

Tuttle (center, in green) with her female fiddle and bass player at HSB.

This year, Molly Tuttle brought her righteous bluegrass band Golden Highway, with which she's won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album two years running. Tuttle spoke of being raised in California and said she was offered her first pot brownie at Hardly Strictly when her mother brought her to the festival. Now a Tennessean, Tuttle rocked the crowd with her song, "Down Home Dispensary" from this year's Grammy-winning "City of Gold" CD.

Hello legislator the voters have spoken
There’s too much politickin' and not enough tokin’
It’s an economic agricultural wonder
So legalize the southland and roll us a number
Hey mister senator I’m asking you please
Put up a down home dispensary in Tennessee

Tuttle also performed the guitar solo and vocal on Tokin' Woman Grace Slick's "White Rabbit," another nod to San Francisco. The song was also performed at the fest by the three female back-up singers from the pot-friendly Dead cover band Moonalice, which includes in its lineup 84-year-old Lester Chambers, who performed the Chambers Brothers classic "Time Has Come Today." 

Nixon Caught On Tape Downplaying Dangers of Pot

Ehrlichman and Nixon

"Nixon Started the War on Drugs. Privately, He Said Pot Was ‘Not Particularly Dangerous,’" read a startling New York Times headline last week.

Minnesota cannabis lobbyist Kurtis Hanna was responsible for the story, after he listened to hours Nixon's infamous Oval Office tapes recently uploaded by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Hanna told the Times he has been "fascinated by the history of drug policy ever since he was arrested inside a casino in Iowa in 2009 and charged with possession of marijuana."

“Let me say, I know nothing about marijuana. I know that it’s not particularly dangerous, in other words, and most of the kids are for legalizing it," Nixon said in a March 1973 White House meeting with aides including then–White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler and White House counsel/Watergate conspirator John Ehrlichman.

Nixon added, "I don't think marijuana is (unintelligible) bad, but on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time." He then began to talk about a coming law enforcement speech in which he would "totally" oppose legalization, bragging that no administration had been as hard-line on the issue, and opening a discussion about mandatory minimum sentences; penalties like five years for a trafficker, and life without parole for repeated offenses were put on the table.

Curiouser and Curiouser Cannabis Politics

If you were in Oregon on Sunday watching the heart-wrenching hour-long 60 Minutes program on 9/11 and the terrible toll it took on the FDNY, you would have seen an ad funded by the National Republican Congressional Committee slamming OR Congresswoman Val Hoyle for her association with the cannabis company La Mota while serving as OR’s labor commissioner. La Mota is under investigation by the FBI and the huge scandal around it lead to the resignation of Oregon’s Secretary of State. 

Hoyle responded to the ad when it first appeared, and a counter ad that aired just after the NRCC one on 60 Minutes featured a firefighter talking about Hoyle’s advocacy for workers. (A second appearance of the NRCC ad on the program went unrebutted.)

Hoyle has apparently been a friend in Congress, tweeting out support  for the cannabis industry when former NFLer and cannabis entrepreneur Ricky Williams visited her office in June. She seems to face scant competition from her “Young Gun” Republican challenger who has now called for a federal investigation into Hoyle and La Mota; still, it’s disturbing that NRCC would attack a Congressperson on this basis, even as presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris now squabble about who is the bigger legalization supporter. 

"Bob Marley: One Love" Tells Rita's Story Too

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley and Lashana Lynch as Rita in "One Love"

The biopic "Bob Marley: One Love," co-produced by several members of Marley's family, tells his and his wife Rita's story in a moving way seldom seen on film. 

Producers include Rita Marley, their oldest son David "Ziggy" (whose nickname means "little spliff"), and daughter Cedella (a cannabis cookbook author and musician). Stephen Marley, the couple's third child, was the film's music supervisor. Also involved as an executive producer, along with Brad Pitt, was Orly Agai Marley, a music industry executive who is married to Ziggy. 

Dionysian Tableau at Paris Olympics Shocks Christian Conservatives Who Forget Their Past

Christian conservatives have gone on the attack about protecting their children against a segment during last night's Olympics opening ceremony in Paris depicting what was seen as a Last Supper-like tableau with a Goddess in the center and Dionysus served up on a plate. 

“[The Last Supper] is not my inspiration and that should be pretty obvious," production designer Thomas Jolly said, [in translation]. "There’s Dionysus arriving on a table. Why is he there? First and foremost because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology and the tableau is called ‘Festivity.’”  

“He is also the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine. The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.”

Those who could only see the Last Supper in the tableau are forgetting or were never taught their history (not to mention their herstory): Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy, was by some accounts the son of the grain goddess Demeter of the ancient Eleusinian mysteries. Those mysteries saw yearly pilgrimages of the faithful to experience communion with each other via the sacrament kykeon, thought to be a psychedelic potion.