Meet Udnie, Picabia’s muse and America’s first supermodel

Who was Udnie? The question plagued scholars of Francis Picabia for years as they searched for the mysterious subject of his 1913 painting Udnie (Jeune fille amricaine; Danse), the centrepiece of a survey of the artists work at the Kunsthaus Zrich (until 25 September; the show heads to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in November but the catalogue is already published). Thanks to James Bones new book, The Curse of Beauty, the riddle may at last have been solved.The book is a biography of the