It was on a bright, beautiful, balmy Saturday morning down
town in the North Carolina City of Charlotte that my daughter; Gail and I
chanced upon something incredible and very interesting. We were just outside
the newly opened Bechtler Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. A large (fifty three foot) flat- bed trailer
truck was being unloading by workers and museum staff members. They were in the
process of installing a mammoth sculpture. As my daughter and I witnessed the
piece was being stacked to a magnificent height right there in the museum’s
plaza. The structure was an extravagant, mosaic-like work with a reflective
silver surface. What was becoming a fantastic creature of gigantic scale (granted
slowly and methodically) was the Niki de Saint Phalle original; “Firebird.”
Just how fortunate were my daughter and I to be privy to this amazing and fantastical
event?
Miss de Saint Phalle came to the world’s notice first as a
model for Vogue and Harpers in the late fifties. Her intelligence, beauty and
sophistication radiated with undeniable elegance and style. Her artistic and
creative skills would develop after a nervous break-down.
Painting was therapy
and a way of coping with the troubles of her early life. Niki would take her
pain, resilience, imagination along with every part of her being and use them
in the creation of pieces that continue to resonate and thrill. The paintings
evolved into mixed-medium expressions that would lead her into the “Shooting
Paintings.” These paintings were literally created by Niki attaching polythene
bags of paint to a designed surface and bursting them by firing a loaded
shotgun. The making of the paintings would become performance pieces and
through them Niki became the only female member of the elusive and respected
“Nouveau Realists.”
The works that were most identified with Niki de Saint
Phalle; her signatures, her alter egos, her “Nanas.” The sculptural statements
of the “Nanas” were representations of robust colorful women; the
“every-woman.” As magnificent in their glory as they were
playful in style and execution. Her crowning and most celebrated Nana was a
work entitled: “Hon-en- Katedral.” It
was a large scale dwelling like work that visitors entered through what Gustav
Courbet would have refer to as “The Origin of the World.” It was credited with
a jump in Sweden’s birth rate the year it was exhibited. It seemed the work was
enjoyed on a truly unpresented, inspirational level by the many.
“Life … is never the
way one imagis it. It surprises you, it amazes you, and it makes you laugh or
cry when you don’t expect it”
Niki de Saint Phalle
“The Tarot Garden” in Tuscany, the “Miles Davis” sculpture
outside the Hotel Le Negresco in Nice and on a smaller scale (but no less
monumental) her impressively unique Niki de Saint Phalle” perfume bottle were
among the great and truly wonderful achievements of Niki’s vastly creative
life. Her career and out-put continually expanded especially during her
marriage to sculptor Jean Tinguely who she also collaborated with on multiple
projects including film and video. The personal
price of Niki’s creativity was ultimately the highest. The polyester fibers in
her favorite medium would cost her life. Her lungs were scare by breathing in
the destructive, fine particles of the material. Within her time and continuously through our own
Niki de Saint Phalle towers and sustains. We are left with the brightness, the
beauty, the spirit of adventure that was Niki de Saint Phalle.
