Niki de Saint Phalle: My Art - My Dreams [Paperback]

Carla Schulz-Hoffmann (Editor), Pierre Restany (Preface)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 379132876X | ISBN-13: 978-3791328768 | Publication Date: October 2003

This is a celebratory book on the works of Niki de Saint Phalle, an artist who lived between 1930 and 2002. Through her work she explored female roles in society and myth, basing many of her disquieting and joyful depictions on personal experience. Chronologically arranged, it takes readers from the visceral and controversial "shooting painting" and her playfully voluptuous "nanas" to the impressive installatins and wonderfully elaborate sculpture gardens such as the Tarot Garden in Tuscany, the Sun God in San Diego and the Stravinsky Fountain in Paris. The artist'own comments and sketches are interspersed throughout the book, providing an integral framework for understanding and appreciating her unusual talent. is made distinctly personal by her handwritten comments and whimsical sketches.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: German --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Prestel Publishing (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 379132876X
• ISBN-13: 978-3791328768
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,025,393 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the legacy of Matisse, April 19, 2004

By 

alexander laurence (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Niki de Saint Phalle: My Art - My Dreams (Paperback)

Niki de Saint Phalle was a French artist who was once a model, provocateur, and a scion of the feminine principle in the great Matissean way. Her first paintings were man-hating objects d'art, based, no doubt, on Sanit Phalle's rejection of patriarchy, and possibly her troubled situation surrounding her first husband, the affluent novelist Harry Mathews.

Saint Phalle also became known for creating paintings to be shot at with a rifle: she would place paint cans on a canvas, and she would, or maybe another artist like Rauschenberg or Tinguely would, shoot a gun at these paintings. These violent acts would be notorious, creating a drug-like sensation, which would become an asterisk in the annuals of performance art and happenings in the 1960s.

Saint Phalle went back to the style of her earlier art, which explored this lost world of pleasure, very much like Henri Matisse, when she created these sculptures of large, natural women, which she called "Nanas." The largest one "The Hon (1965)," was built by a group of artists, and filled a museum in Stockholm, where spectators could enter through the body, through the vagina. I guess that you had to pay the museum staff (the pimp) for this privilege?

Saint Phalle then collaborated with her second husband, Jean Tinguely, on several projects in the 1970s: this is when the esthetic legacies and ramifications of the two great ones, Duchamp and Matisse, came together in their offspring, Tinguely and Saint Phalle. One can see theri work in Paris, a homage to Stranvinsky in Centre Pompidou (1982): Tinguely's hard machinery which became a parody of rationalism, and Saint Phalle's soft bodies which were discursions in Mediterranean pleasure, yet evocative of Bataille's problematic connection to the excremental world. Saint Phalle spent several years working on her Gaudi-like sculptural garden in Italy, The Taror Gardens, in Garavivvhio (Tuscany). Later in the 1980s, she resurfaced with her book about AIDS.

Many people now find her work dated and possibly hippy dippy. In fact she was one of the original feminist artists, with any self-consciousness or political agenda. Her work, due to its scope and relation to European history and art, has little to do with American artists of the same time, so many people have ignored it. Not many have seen it. Her collage work does have a tangential relationship to Pop Art. There is a movie about her life called "Who Is The Monster: You Or Me?" She died finally in summer 2003.

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful creative woman artist, May 16, 2010

By 

M. Roer (Mojave Desert) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Niki de Saint Phalle: My Art - My Dreams (Paperback)

I have been a fan of Niki's work for a long time and it is my dream to go to Tuscany to see her Tarrot garden.

I wish there would be more artists, who make art so approachable and fun. I remember that when I took art classes my professors were not familiar with Niki.Obviously she was not serious enough for them.
I had seen her work first in Europe and became a fan. Due to her collabaration with Jean Tinguely her sculptures moved or became fun houses. The book shows her evolution from a shooting artist to creating the huge Tarrot garden in Tuscany.