The free life of Niki de Saint Phalle, the feminist plastic artist who sublimated the "girls"

Stéphane Bern, edited by Alexis Patri 7:00 p.m., December 20, 2021

"I understood early on that men have power. And that power, I wanted it. Yes, I would steal fire from them. I wouldn't accept the limits my mother tried to place on my life because I was a woman." This profession of faith is that of Niki de Saint Phalle. Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint-Phalle for the Civil Status, born in October 1930 in the upscale neighborhoods of Neuilly-sur-Seine, she was not predisposed from birth to this revolutionary discourse. Catherine, quickly renamed Niki by her mother, grew up between family castles in France, and the gigantic apartments of Park Avenue, in New York. His father came from an old family of knightly nobility converted to the bank. His mother is a wealthy American heiress. On paper, a dream life.

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But behind the curtains of palaces hides a violent environment.

And a painful childhood.

Niki's mother is often brutal, including physically.

But the horror arrives one day in the summer of 1942. The little girl is 11 years old.

Her father rapes her.

The couple maintain the appearances of a good family in every way.

But Niki suffocates under this moral appearance.

The revelation of Park Güell

In her Catholic school in Manhattan, she painted the grape leaves that cover the sex of the statues in bright red.

His schooling is going badly.

Niki is restless, irreverent.

At 17, a modeling agent spotted her at a ball.

She then began a career and posed on the cover of

and

 in a thick fur coat.

Niki is beautiful, very beautiful even, with her fine features, her big blue eyes and her extravagant hats.

At the same time, she married the American writer Harry Mathews and gave birth to a baby girl.

But the young bride sinks into a depression so violent that she is interned.

Harry brings him papers, pencils and brushes.

This is where the artist begins to paint. 

From classic oils to rifle paints

Released from the hospital, Niki visits Spain, with her husband.

In 1955, she discovered with emotion Gaudi's Park Güell, in Barcelona.

It's her own "Genoa night".

In her heart, she nourishes the project of realizing her own 'garden of joy', filled with sculptures. 

Niki returned to Paris in the mid-1950s. There she met the sculptor and inventor of hijacked machines, Jean Tinguely.

In her studio, she suggests that he add feathers to one of her works.

Tinguely is astonished… and seduced.

The two artists will never leave each other. 

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Initially, Niki de Saint-Phalle painted rather classic oils.

Then she launches into paintings-assemblages, made of found objects and various materials such as earth, plaster, wire.

Self-taught, she draws on art brut, in vogue in the 1950s, and goes to the Louvre every day.

She rubs shoulders with artists, reads a lot. 

Success is not long in coming.

In 1961, Niki de Saint-Phalle attracted attention, in France and around the world, for her

, paintings conceived as performances.

Armed with a 22 long rifle rented from the shooting range of a fun fair, the young woman shoots her canvases to burst small pockets full of paint.

From destruction comes creation.

Synthesis of avant-garde and public recognition

"Without art, I would have died with my head exploded," says Niki. But it's not just about surviving, it's also about living and shattering all the hypocrisy of the world in which she grew up, this universe where you wear a mask. 'I will do the opposite, I will show everything, my heart, my emotions, the green, the red, the yellow, all the colors ", she claims. 

From the start, Niki de Saint Phalle succeeded in the difficult synthesis of avant-garde and public recognition.

But the real celebrity is announced when, in 1964, she creates her first

.

Niki has not forgotten her desire for sculptures.

So she makes a woman, with wire netting and sheets dipped in glue and decorated with colored wool.

"Nana" is the nickname of one of his former nannies.

“Nana,” like that popular term for women, too.

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Gradually, his sculptures become more professional. They are in polyester resin, then in polystyrene, and covered with bright colors. They are immense, monumental.

, produced in 1966 for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, weighs six tons. She is lying on her back, and visitors enter through her vagina. The other girls are just as big and colorful, but more airy.

They are light, seem to dance, lifted off the ground with grace, in no way embarrassed by their bulging belly, their plump buttocks and their swollen breasts.

They have no face, no orifice: they are impenetrable, inviolable.

, for example, flies above Zurich station, like a feather 11 meters, and more than a ton.

Her multicolored striped swimsuit is painted in water, a heart on one breast, a flower on the other.

Les 

Nanas

, more political works than they seem

Niki is inspired by American pop art. She is also an heir to the dada movement, and is part of the New Realists group, founded by the painter Yves Klein, and which Christo also joins in particular. Together they advocate a return to reality, as opposed to abstract painting, without falling into figuration. 

Girls are a huge hit.

They are exported all over the world: Basel, Hanover, Montreal… They also respond to a desire of their creator to bring art out of salons, galleries and museums to offer it to everyone, in gardens and in streets.

Niki de Saint Phalle is so tied to her sculptures that sometimes she gets annoyed to see her art reduced to girls.

But their tangy appearance pleases.

They are pretty, pop, cheerful.

They are available on t-shirts or on mugs.

But under their childish aspect, the Nanas reveal an eminently more political meaning.

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In the 1960s, women were still predominantly at home.

Women artists exist, but few achieve recognition.

Niki de Saint Phalle already carries, through her presence and her work, a form of feminism.

Of her rifle paintings done even before the Women's Liberation Movement, she says: "It was very outrageous to see a pretty young woman shooting a rifle and bitching at men in her interviews."

 With the Nanas, Saint Phalle began a work that was not immediately perceived as feminist.

Yet the sculptures feature powerful women.

Dynamic, sporty, comfortable with their body, while moving away from the canons of beauty advocated in particular by women's magazines.

Above all, they occupy public space, traditionally reserved for men.

The Tarot garden, a dream built as a conductor

The Nanas impose themselves by their large size, they dominate the world of their insurance.

The colors with which they are draped conceal, at first glance, their subversion.

It is an army which, in the four corners of the world, launches cheerfully, like their creator: "The Nanas in power, the women in power!"

The artist also creates Black Nanas, showing his sensitivity and his commitment to the racial issue.

Niki de Saint Phalle's work embraces the struggles of her time for civil rights and the emancipation of women.

This is also what makes it successful.

She perfectly fits in with the 1960s, the decade of provocation, of rebellion against the old order, which Niki also fights in a more intimate way: the family, the patriarchy, the Church.

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In 1971, Niki married Jean Tinguely, her longtime accomplice.

With him, she embarked on her great project: the Tarot garden, in Tuscany.

A park dotted with gigantic sculptures on which she worked for 20 years.

She is the conductor and her husband assists her.

A fairly rare situation in the art world. 

In 2002, Niki de Saint Phalle died of a respiratory problem linked to products and materials used without protection throughout her career.

In her Italian garden, in which she has shown that a woman can do as well as Gaudi, figures prominently a Nana.

Niki is gone, but Nana continues to dance on the rooftops.