Upon her arrival in Paris, Aïcha lived at Villa Falguière, close to the artists Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani, Moise Kisling, and Tsuguharu Foujita. She would occasionally cook for them, and she would sometimes lend them money for food from her earnings as a model. Foujita drew an almost Cubist portrait of Aïcha, with a long cigarette holder in her hand, her hair a vaporous Afro, her lips those of an African mask. In their book Montparnasse (1925), G. Fuss-Amoré and M. Desormiaux write: “Some artists sometimes portray her with red hair, green breasts, or depict her in a variety of colored shapes. No auction of modern painting takes place at Hôtel Drouot without some representation of this Martiniquaise from the Batignolles.” One could probably write a monograph about her various images, which are at times very close to those of Josephine Baker. Fuss-Amoré and Desormiaux also remark:
It is difficult to tell what kind of rejuvenating potion protects her from the signs of age. One finds her ever the same, unchanged, holding her position, graceful and slender. … She has remained the wisest of models. She holds fast to the old principles … Any coarse male who would come too close to her would face a wild cat.
In the early 1920s, Aïcha took to the stage and danced nearly naked with a troupe at the Olympia music hall. She also performed on the legitimate stage in dramatic parts. She appeared, for example, in L’hôtel des masques by Albert Jean, as well as in Le simoun and L’ombre du mal, both by Henri René Lenormand. This latter play was a 1924 rewrite of Terres chaudes, a work that Charles Dullin had created at the Grand Guignol in 1913. Steeped in barbarism and witchcraft, Lenormand added a section stressing the submissiveness of an African houseboy, Moussa. The goriest scenes were left out, for the benefit of psychological depth. The new version was quite a success when Gaston Baty staged it at his Studio des Champs Elysées the year before Josephine appeared there. In a stifling tropical ambiance, the visual effects were reinforced by African chants offstage during the performance. And as was usual in so-called “colonial” or “exotic” plays, there was a native dance episode. Reviewer Jean Fangeat thought that the new version, focusing as it did on “the debasement of colonizer and colonized,” was more incisive than Terres chaudes, yet too sentimental. The famous African star Habib Benglia took the part of the all-powerful Féticheur, and Jean Fangeat noted that:
Madame Aicha in the part of the captive, and Suzanne Demar in the part of Fatimata, bring more exoticism to a stage on which Gaston Baty has set up a strange straw-house made of raffia and logs.
Aïcha also performed in La cavalière Elsa, a play by Charles Demasy adapted from the novel by Pierre Mac Orlan. In this play, Aïcha danced for the pleasure of “a Bolshevik costumed like a Prince Hamlet.” About her performance, she wrote: “I was nearly naked… I was given a scanty belt, as if to pave the way for the coming to France of the famous Josephine, but nothing concealed my thighs. … I nearly forgot to say that I also gave the replica to Charles Boyer; probably on another nearly naked occasion.” A circus artist, then a popular model, then a self-trained, occasional music hall dancer and actress, Aïcha Goblet had already taken many of the career steps that Baker would herself later attempt, and evoked a very similar response from many critics. As Salmon remarked, in language that more than obliquely references Baker, “the voluptuous beauties at the Colonial Exhibition could not vie with those in Montparnasse … The Miss Africa of Montparnasse is Aïcha.” Nevertheless, Aïcha did not become nearly as celebrated as Baker and had to content herself with making a modest living and enjoying all the while an impeccable reputation.
