Niki de Saint Phalle in Aix-en-Provence

 

Ballet  1966 (from Roland Petit's ballet "In praise of Folly")

Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) has become a famous figure of French 20th century art, especially thanks to her large blown-up sculptures of brightly coloured women- her "Nanas" (French slang for Women), by which she explodes the canons of female beauty and brings a smile to your face.  A big exhibition is programmed at the Grand Palais in Paris later this year.  For the moment, there is a highly colourful  summer show down in Aix-en-Provence, at the elegant Hôtel Caumont museum. 70 works are on display, including some rarely seen. The theme is Niki's magic bestiary:

poster for the Aix Exhibition

                       

Animals are important throughout Niki's work and have symbolic meaning.

Birds, according to the commissaire of the Aix exhibition- Lucia Pesapane- are a metaphor for the artist's spiritual quest and also represent goodness. They are perhaps a way of escaping, as the large bird with woman attached may be demonstrating:

L'Oiseau Amoureux (la nuit) (The Bird in Love- night) 1990
Niki Charitable Art Foundation

Many of the works have been loaned from the Niki Charitable Art Foundation in California, which Niki established to look after her legacy. The artist delves into myths of different countries and bygone ages for her own inspiration. Then, with her unbridled imagination, she works her own particular magic, as with the Egyptian hippo lamp below. The pregnant Egyptian deity with her hanging breasts is a protectress of the hearth and defender of pregnant women:

 

Thoëris, Hippo Lamp 1990 Private Collection

The snake represents man, life and death, sin (she was brought up in a Catholic school, where she said her first artistic act was to paint the fig leaves on the statues bright red!)- it is also the father figure.  Lots of snakes abound in Niki's work. As she progresses, the snakes become less menacing, more jolly. She herself said that by making the snakes herself she could turn the fear they inspired her into joy. The one below is incorporated into a pouffe:

Pouf serpent jaune (Yellow snake pouffe) 1991 (Private collection)

Niki borrows from Mexican legends for her Firebird, or Sun God:

Oiseau de feu (Firebird) / Sun God 1982

Some of her creations were conceived for her Tarot card park in Tuscany- the big project she was involved in during the latter years of her life. She saw herself as a creator of a dreamworld. The idea had germinated in her when she visited the Güell park by Gaudí near Barcelona. 

Niki made money for her monumental projects by selling spin-off products, including a perfume. At the same time she was desacralizing art. How logical to use a camel- the water carrier- for a plant pot with cacti planted in it!

Grand chameau vase (Large camel vase) 1991  Private Collection

As for the spider- she represents the mother figure- the creature which stifles and smothers her child. The spider was one of the works she shot at when she was living in Impasse Ronsin, Paris in the summer of 1961, splattering paint all over it and symbolically destroying the mother figure. The sculpture on show here has many tiny hands -or are they garden forks?- and a sinister skull in the centre:

Black widow spider 1963 Private Collection, Courtesy of Galérie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois

 At this time, she became associated with a group of male artists known as the "New Realists" (Yves Klein, Arman, Daniel Spoerri, Tinguely etc.) 

Niki claimed that her own mother devoured her, but also admitted that she devoured her own children!  Here is a photo of Niki, aged 39, from the exhibition:

Niki was the nick name her mother gave her. Her real name was Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle. As a child, with her siblings, she spent holidays in the family chateau in the Nivernais region, South East of Paris. Her childhood dreams and fantasies became part of her creations- for example the dragons and princesses of fairy tales.                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Monstre (Monster) 1963 Musée d'Art de Toulon

    The above work exemplifies her method of assembling diverse objects- plastic dolls, toys...

A playful red dragon features in the Aix exhibition:

Le Dragon Rouge (The Red Dragon) 1964 Courtesy of Galérie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois

In 1971, Niki built an installation in Jerusalem for children which features a slightly crazy looking dragon called the Golem. Its triple tongue forms a slide. The dragon, or monster, represents the artist's fears.                                                                                                                                            Niki confronts her own monsters in her work. In the collage below, she incorporates coffee grains, bits of porcelain, beads and pebbles to create an imaginative vision of a pink nude with  a brown dragon:

Pink nude with dragon 1958  Sprengel Museum, Hanover

Uccello's St. George and the dragon (painted around 1470) was an inspiration for her work. The pink nude seems to be in control of the monster, reminiscent of mediaeval stained glass windows where saints sometimes hold monsters on a leash. The background resembles Gaudi's landscape at the Park Güell. 

Below the playful surface often lurks a world of darkness and violence. Niki's series devoted to marriage and maternity express the anguish contained for her in those subjects.  As in her "Mariées" (Brides) series, her "Cathedral" is composed of diverse items- lots of  toys and here small statues painted over in white:

Cathédrale (Cathedral) circa 1962  Niki Charitable Art Foundation

Her portrayal of "Birth" is not very appealing! It presents a tormented vision:

Birth  1963  Sprengel Museum, Hannover

Created out of diverse objects, Niki's 'Castle of the Monster and the bride', appears to show the story of a girl rescuing a bride from a chateau where monsters reside:

Le château du monstre et de la mariée (Castle of the monster and the bride) circa 1956-8
Oil painting with diverse objects: string, buttons etc

Niki's work has a feeling of  French artist Dubuffet and 'brut' art. The naive quality makes her message all the stronger. 

Niki, the daughter of an aristocrat, lived in a chateau as a child. Her early life was spent between France and New York until her marriage at 19 years with an American writer and musician Harry Mathews. Four years and two children later, the family moved to France. Niki was in a deep depression and spent a year in a clinic near Nice where she received electroshock treatment. Painting was therapeutic for her.

As she herself wrote, "I started painting among mad people". Her underlying trauma was caused by her father who violated her when she was 11 years old.  She eventually wrote about it in a book called "Mon Secret", published in 1994 when she was 64 years of age. She broke the taboo over her father's incestuous relationship, explaining in clear and simple terms how it led to the genesis of her art. The story of the "summer of snakes" as she calls it, is addressed to her daughter Laura. Niki's position as victim also enabled her to understand other injustices of the world, such as racism. 

In her series " Last Night I had a dream" which makes obvious reference to Martin Luther King's famous speech. A room in the Hôtel Caumont is devoted to a trip into the artist's subconscious, treated with humour and irony:

Last Night I had a dream 1968-88 Niki Charitable Art Foundation

Niki was "engagée" to use the French word, in numerous struggles- for the protection of nature (for example the vegetation on the coast near Nice), against the building of nuclear power stations in Italy   or against hunting or sea pollution. Nowadays we would call her an"Eco-feminist", the rape of the earth and nature being seen as akin to the rape of women.

In her dream sequence, Niki includes an interracial couple in a bed together:

Last Night I had a dream (detail) 

Her work joyfully affirms that a person can overcome their deepest fears and take control of their own lives. The lady riding a unicorn sculpture, which she created in the 90s, looks to be empowered:

The Unicorn 1994  Niki Charitable Arts Foundation

 As for another mythical character- the mermaid- who traditionally lures men to their death or to madness- Niki's "Sirène" of 1982 is akin to her earth mother Nanas and appears also in the Stravinsky fountain in Paris where the two breasts spurt out water.  

Sirène (Mermaid) 1982  Flassans-sur-Issole, Commanderie de Peyrassol, Collection Philippe Austruy

Her last great project opened up to the public after her death in 2002: the shamanic garden at Escondido in San Diego, where totems surround queen Califia, the whole surrounded by a 120 metre long winding snake, one of Niki's iconic beasts.

In the 1960s, Niki de Saint Phalle worked with Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, who became her second husband. She combined her joie de vivre figures with his motive-less machines in their monumental art-work: The Stravinsky Fountain, near the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Although the modern art collection at the Pompidou Centre is closed for several years, due to renovation of the building, Niki de Saint Phalle's fountains are there for all to see- as a memory of her happy collaboration with Tinguely:

 

Stravinsky fountain, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely 1983 near the Pompidou centre

                               

Niki de Saint Phalle Exhibition,

Hôtel Caumont,

Aix en Provence 

From April 30 to October 5, 2025

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