News & Announcements

In her Huffington Post article Feminist (R)evolution in Brooklyn: Reclaiming Women for Pop, art critic, curator and New Media artist Lisa Paul Streitfeld praises the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958-1968:

“The irresistible seduction of these ‘proto-feminist’ pioneers on view in Brooklyn through January 9 (though the exhibit will be going on tour) not only succeeds in making the underpinnings of a historical movement come alive again, but inspires a new erotically charged Pop movement liberated from the feminist straightjacket and devoted to the mythology of an authentic liberation of gender equality, within and without.”

Streitfield also calls attention to catalog co-editor Kalliopi Minioudaki’s “standout essay” “Pop Proto-Feminisms: Beyond the Paradox of the Woman Pop Artist,” which, in her view, “brings to light what may prove to be the most pertinent feminist scholarship of this century.”

The exhibition featured Niki de Saint Phalle’s My Heart Belongs to Marcel Duchamp (1963, shown here) and Black Rosy (1965). Read the entire article.
 

“Niki de Saint Phalle: Play With Me,” a large-scale exhibition presenting a broad survey of Niki’s work, will be coming to the Kunsthalle Würth in Schwäbisch Hall in April.

With more than 100 works on exhibit, the show — curated by Guido Magnaguagno, former director of the Tinguely Museum in Basel, in cooperation with Bloum Cardenas, granddaughter of the artist — will include sculptures from the Würth Collection alongside works on loan from the Niki Charitable Art Foundation, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Nice. The show will also include works by Jean Tinguely, Niki’s long-term partner, and paintings by her first teacher, Hugh Weiss. A special feature will be the inclusion of Niki’s films in the exhibition.

The exhibit will open 17 April and continue through 16 October 2011. Learn more.
 

To mark the new year, we bring you a love letter to Niki de Saint Phalle from Hannah Marshall, writing in The Riviera Times.

Marshall, whose move to France was inspired by Niki and her work, describes “my pilgrimage to her holy land” — a trip to the Tarot Garden, the masterpiece in Tuscany on which Niki worked for decades:

Watching Natasha run from the Sun to the Star, clambering over dragons in the woods and squeezing into cubbyholes, I remember a favourite de Saint Phalle quote: “In this world of so much pain, if a sculpture of mine can give a moment of joy, a moment of life to a passerby, I feel rewarded.”

“Come quick, you have to see this,” Natasha shouts at me, “now this really is magical.” She pulls me into the sugar-plum interior of the Emperor, her eyes wide. And still, I’m not sure who is happier, the real child holding my hand or the eternal one trapped inside of me.

We hope you enjoy Marshall’s beautifully written account of her visit as much as we did.
 

Niki de Saint Phalle’s Black Rosy, or My Heart Belongs to Rosy (1965) is among more than fifty works by groundbreaking women artists in “Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968,” now on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

Art critic Ken Johnson gives the exhibition a thumbs-up review in The New York Times, while Stephen Brown of The Brooklyn Paper says the show gives Pop patriarch Andy Warhol “a swift kick in the groin through an eclectic mix of works that are both provocative and humorous.”

“This large-scale exhibition examines the impact of women artists on the traditionally male-dominated field of Pop art,” says the Brooklyn Museum web site. “It reconsiders the narrow definition of the Pop art movement and reevaluates its critical reception. In recovering important female artists, the show expands the canon to reflect more accurately the women working internationally during this period.”

The exhibition, which opened on 15 October and continues through 9 January 2011, also features works by Chryssa, Rosalyn Drexler, Marisol, Yayoi Kusama, Jann Haworth, Vija Celmins, Lee Lozano, Marjorie Strider, Idelle Weber, and Joyce Wieland, among many others.

(Image © NCAF. All rights reserved. Photo: Laurent Condominas)
 

If you have access to ARTE, the Franco-German cultural TV channel, don’t miss “Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely: the Bonnie and Clyde of Art,” a 55-minute film by Anne Julien and Louise Faure. This “joyful hommage to the pair of sculptors and their magical creations” will be broadcast Monday 23 August at 11:25 pm (23:25) European time. It will be rebroadcast 6 September at 11:20 am.

Here is ARTE’s description of the film:

“Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely meet in Paris in 1955, in the artistic ferment of the post-war period. They are 25 and 30 years old, both married. They become friends. Five years later, they have fallen in love and decide to live and create together. For forty years, in the course of their journey, the nomadic pair give birth not to children, but to sculptures, most of them monumental, all over the world — totems, said Niki de Saint Phalle, ‘to make people happy.’ And indeed, from Europe to Japan, their work has found a huge audience, delighting children and adults with his sacred machines and her colorful creatures. With magnificent archival footage and accounts from relatives, Louise Faure and Anne Julien recount their lives and their epic art, always so closely intertwined.”
 

In June, the Charlotte Observer invited its readers to send photos of themselves with Niki de Saint Phalle’s Firebird (Le grand oiseau de feu sur l’arche), now on permanent public display in front of the new Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. The winners of this competition are graphic designer Rachel Hewitt and her husband, Eric Whiteside, a high school English teacher. “That’s me in the mirror,” says Rachel.

Speaking of her husband (the guy holding the mirror), Rachel adds, “Living with someone who encourages his students (and wife) to think creatively is continuously inspiring. Eric celebrates the unique — and one could say, I am merely a reflection of that. And it made me laugh to shoot the photograph.”

Congratulations to Rachel and Eric, the other finalists, and everyone else who entered. To see other entries, visit the Charlotte Observer web site.
 

France 3 television’s Culturebox looks at the Niki de Saint Phalle retrospective now at the Château de Malbrouck, near Metz in the Moselle region of France.

The clip (in French) includes an interview with Bloum Cardenas, granddaughter of Niki de Saint Phalle and trustee of the Niki Charitable Art Foundation. The exhibition, which runs through 29 August 2010, features 130 works spanning the entire range of Niki’s career, from the shooting paintings of the early 1960s to the massive mosaic sculptures created during her years in California.
 

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., has announced that Niki de Saint Phalle will be the inaugural artist for the New York Avenue Sculpture Project, “a dynamic new space that will enhance D.C.’s public art profile by featuring changing installations of contemporary works by women.”

“Her vibrant works celebrate women, children, heroes, diversity and love,” says the NMWA press release. Four of Niki’s sculptures will be installed on the 1200 block of New York Avenue in front of the museum. NMWA will dedicate this first phase of the sculpture project on 28 April 2010. For more information, visit www.nmwa.org/sculptureproject.

Read the Washington Post article about Niki de Saint Phalle and the Sculpture Project.