October 31 is the final day for “Niki in the Garden,” the stunning exhibition of 39 playful, larger-than-life mosaic sculptures now on display at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.
The works in the critically acclaimed exhibition include exquisite, brilliantly colored Nanas, animals, heroes, and totems ranging from four to eighteen feet tall, some of them weighing more than a ton. Read the exhibition press release, take an audio-visual tour, or check out a review and a survey of Niki’s life and work by critic David Bonetti — then hustle down to the Missouri Botanical Garden before it’s too late. This is one show you don’t want to miss.
You’ll see work by Niki de Saint Phalle and other artistic pioneers in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art.
Organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MoCA), the touring exhibition opens 4 October at the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia, where it will run through 18 January 2009.
The Tarot Garden, the sculpture garden created by Niki de Saint Phalle in Tuscany between 1978 and 2002, is one of the world’s 50 most beautiful gardens, says Tim Richardson of the Weekly Telegraph:
“Monumental figures, wittily realised in the artist’s trademark bright colours, amorphous shapes and mosaic-work, many of which also serve as pavilions or small buildings, were based on tarot cards. The artist lived inside The Empress for a number of years. The interior has to be seen to be believed. … The integrity of the artist shines out and one can only wonder at the sustained obsessional energy required to make it. One interesting aspect of the garden is that the pieces have been deliberately placed close together — crammed in, almost — so that the whole space can be experienced in one sustained gulp.”
Education and research are fundamental to the mission of the Niki Charitable Art Foundation. In the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out new resources for researchers, students, and educators, beginning with this detailed roster of individual exhibitions by Niki de Saint Phalle (from 1956 to the present), a list of museum collections worldwide with works by Niki de Saint Phalle, and a selected bibliography.
Upcoming additions will include further informational resources about Niki’s life and work, materials designed for use by students and educators, and a guide to offline resources in the NCAF Archive for researchers.
Niki de Saint Phalle is one of 21 artists featured in Wunderkammer: Figur und Raum — von Archipenko bis Niki de Saint Phalle, a group exhibition at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany. The exhibition opens on 8 June and runs through 17 August 2008.
Other artists included in the show are Alexander Archipenko, Jean Arp, Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann, Rudolf Belling, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Bernhard Hoetger, Alfred Hrdlicka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, R.B. Kitaj, Käthe Kollwitz, Henri Laurens, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jacques Lipchitz, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, Pablo Picasso, Germaine Richier, and Kurt Schwitters.
Niki de Saint Phalle was born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle in 1930 in France into a life of wealth and privilege. Her father was a French aristocrat and her mother a wealthy American. The family was wiped out financially, however, during the Great Depression and immigrated to the United States.
In New York, young Catherine, now going by Niki, adapted to life on the Upper East Side, attending a series of private schools from all of which she was expelled for insubordination. She eloped when she was 18 with the 19-year-old musician/novelist Harry Mathews, who took her to Cambridge where he completed his studies at Harvard.
A beautiful young woman, de Saint Phalle modeled for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle and appeared on the cover of Life magazine. She and Mathews returned to Europe in 1952, where they both developed their cultural lives.
In Paris, de Saint Phalle functioned as a liaison between the European and American art worlds. She met the American poets John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, and the American artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Larry Rivers. She was championed by Pierre Restany, the critic behind the “Nouveau Réalisme” (New Realism) movement, a French version of American Pop art. Among the Nouveau Réaliste artists she was associated with were Swiss kinetic sculptor Jean Tinguely, whom she later married; Christo; Yves Klein; and Arman.
De Saint Phalle caused a sensation with her “Shooting Paintings.” For these performance-based works, which she made from 1961 to 1963, she attached balloons filled with paint to canvas and then shot them with a rifle so that the paint dripped out in a parody of action painting.
During these years, she also designed sets and costumes for the ballet and theater.
In 1965, inspired by a friend’s pregnant form, de Saint Phalle started making her “Nanas,” zaftig but contemporary earth mothers. (Nana can be translated as “chick” or “babe.”) Her most famous Nana, “Hon” (Swedish for “She”), also caused an international sensation. A 1966 room-sized reclining woman installed in the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm, it could be entered between the legs.
In 1967-68, de Saint Phalle and Tinguely collaborated on a major work for the French Pavilion at the Montreal World’s Fair. In 1982, they also collaborated on the Stravinksy Fountain adjacent to the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
De Saint Phalle’s major effort at the end of her life was the “Tarot Garden” she created in Tuscany. For more than 20 years she worked on a project blending art and nature that had been a goal of hers since 1954 when she saw Gaudi’s Parc Guell in Barcelona.
In 1994, de Saint Phalle moved to San Diego. In 2000, she received the Praemium Imperial for Sculpture from the Japan Art Association, one of the most prestigious awards in creativity in the world.
She died in San Diego in 2002.
— David Bonetti, Post-Dispatch Visual Arts Critic
Photo: Niki de Saint Phalle painting “Le Monde” in her studio in France circa 1981. (Laurent Condominas)
Marking the opening of “Niki in the Garden” at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visual Arts Critic David Bonetti surveys the life and work of Niki de Saint Phalle, from her early association with the French Nouveau Réalistes and her sensational “shooting paintings” to her Nanas, the Tarot Garden in Tuscany, and other spectacular sculptures. The photo here shows Niki de Saint Phalle painting “Le Monde” in her studio in France circa 1981.
Bloum Cardenas grew up seeing her grandmother creating.
And when Niki de Saint Phalle began a round, bright female piece called “Clarice Again,” Cardenas watched it in the yard and painted and colored a smaller version of her own.
“She didn’t want me to be painting on her work,” said Cardenas, a board member of the Niki Charitable Art Foundation and herself an artist living in San Francisco working mostly with plastic bags. “But she gave me one to color so that I could participate.”
On Sunday, April 27, Niki in the Garden officially opens at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Guides and signs will let people know exactly which ones are meant for looking and which are built for climbing.
Since 2001, the garden has brought in outside art, including Chapungu, stone sculptures from Zimbabwe, and most notably the glass creations of Dale Chihuly. But nothing has invited participation the way Niki has.
On Sunday, Kim Treff of St. Louis watched as her daughter, Greta, 3, climbed around one of two giant, mosaiced lions.
Treff loved the colors, the size and how her daughter could explore it, she said, but it’s not something you expect to see here.
Because of that, Lynn Kerkemeyer, special exhibitions manager for the garden, wasn’t sure what people would think of Niki’s pieces, all sculptures made of fiberglass and mosaic or painted polyester. They explode, she said, with color, light and brightness.
For all their beauty, Kerkemeyer thought, “they are very different from our formal garden.”
Already, though, “we’re just seeing people of all ages absolutely loving it,” said Karen Hagenow, public relations coordinator with the garden.
“It’s very accessible,” she said. “Which is what’s exciting about it.”
All 39 pieces (the two lions are considered one piece) were created by Niki de Saint Phalle and cost about $1 million to bring in, including installation and shipping, Kerkemeyer said. Most of that amount came from donors and corporate sponsors. The French-born, self-taught artist and only female member of Europe’s New Realist movement made the sculptures of animals, totems, women, or “nanas,” and black heroes before her death in 2002. She was 71 at the time, suffering from emphysema, a result of breathing polyester fiber early in her career.
Her work is featured around the world, including in Italy, Jerusalem and California. And often when making the animal and totem sculptures, Cardenas said, her grandmother was thinking of children.
But the exhibit, which runs through Halloween, isn’t meant just for kids.
As Linda Kutter of Wood River, IL, toured the garden, she caught sight of the six-ton skull, “La Cabeza.”
“Look at that one,” she said to her husband. “Holy cow.”
“Niki in the Garden” opens this Sunday at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Journalist Kristen Hare visited a preview of the exhibition, along with Kim Treff and her three-year-old daughter Greta:
Since 2001, the garden has brought in outside art, including Chapungu, stone sculptures from Zimbabwe, and most notably the glass creations of Dale Chihuly. But nothing has invited participation the way Niki has.
On Sunday, Kim Treff of St. Louis watched as her daughter, Greta, 3, climbed around one of two giant, mosaiced lions.
Treff loved the colors, the size and how her daughter could explore it, she said, but it’s not something you expect to see here.
Because of that, Lynn Kerkemeyer, special exhibitions manager for the garden, wasn’t sure what people would think of Niki’s pieces, all sculptures made of fiberglass and mosaic or painted polyester. They explode, she said, with color, light and brightness.
For all their beauty, Kerkemeyer thought, “they are very different from our formal garden.”
Already, though, “we’re just seeing people of all ages absolutely loving it,” said Karen Hagenow, public relations coordinator with the garden.
“It’s very accessible,” she said. “Which is what’s exciting about it.”
October 31 is the final day for “Niki in the Garden,” the stunning exhibition of 39 playful, larger-than-life mosaic sculptures now on display at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.