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Kiki Chantant dans un Caberet de Montparnasse

Artist Brassaï (French, 1899-1984)

Artist Gyula Halász Brassaï (French, 1899-1984)

CultureFrench

Date1933

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsOverall, Image: 12 3/8 × 9 3/8 in. (31.4 × 23.8 cm)
Overall, Support: 14 3/8 × 11 3/4 in. (36.5 × 29.8 cm)
Overall, Mat: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm)

InscribedSigned and numbered 11/30 in ink in the margin; signed and titled and dated in ink and stamped on the verso.

Credit LineMuseum purchase

Object number84.81

Not on view

DescriptionThis is a gelatin silver print photograph of a woman singing while a seated man plays an accordian. Two onlookers sit in the corner behind the man.

Label TextBrassaï (Gyula Halász) French (b. Romania, 1899-1984) Kiki Singing in the Cabaret, Montparnasse, 1933 Gelatin-silver print, 1970s Purchase, Horace W. Goldsmith Fund 84.81 Brassaï's images of Parisian street and nightlife, populated with underworld and underground characters, have come to epitomize the darkly romantic Paris of the 1930s. He was encouraged by his friend André Kertész to take up photography after finding painting lacking in immediacy. Brassaï associated with the Surrealists, and his book Paris de Nuit (1933) has become a classic example of personal, interpretive documentation.Exhibition History"A History of Photography: 15 Years of Photography at the Chrysler Museum," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; September 11, 1993-March 6, 1994. "History of Photography," Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photography Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va, Fall, 2001. "Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris," The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN, September 10, 2009 - January 3, 2010; International Center of Photography, New York, NY, January 29 - May 9, 2010; the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, June 10 - October 10, 2010. Published ReferencesTheresa Lichtenstein, _Twilight Visions: Surrealism and Paris_, exh. cat., (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), 54.