 Among his closest friends were the poets Robert Desnos and Louis Aragon.Upon Malkine's death, Aragon wrote a lengthy poetic tribute to Malkine, published in his magazine "Les lettres françaises".A historian of Surrealism has erroneously suggested that Malkine was homosexual based on a Man Ray photograph of him kissing his first wife, Yvette, who wore her hair short like a man's.