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XX TH CENTURY

Niki de Saint Phalle, la révolte à l’œuvre

Catherine Francblin

She is inextricably linked to her over-dimensioned Nanas that made her famous. But Niki de Saint-Phalle is not limited to these icons of colored femininity the public at large loves so. Earlier on she had shocked more than “a lucky few” with her “shooting paintings” or with her colossal lying odalisque, Hon, presented in 1966 at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. One could visit the inside by going through the vagina. Niki de Saint-Phalle was a descendant of a blue-blooded dynasty ruined by the crash in 1929, was abused by her own father, married to an experimental writer -Harry Mathews-, was a friend of Queneau’s and then of one of the popes of art brut (Tinguely). She had multiple lives. The book covers all of them in parallel, tracing her friendships with Spoerri, Restany, Jodorowsky among others, her creations (from< i>The Golem in Jerusalem to the garden of Tarots in Italy) and her sufferings. There is only one thing that is missing, which Anglo-Saxon publishers know how to avoid: the absence of an index of the names, that would be most useful to find one’s way through this labyrinth of lovers, friendships and artistic influences!


Niki de Saint Phalle, la révolte à l’œuvre, by Catherine Francblin, Hazan, 2013, 448 p., €29

Niki de Saint Phalle, la révolte à l’œuvre - Catherine Francblin


Review published in the newsletter #318 - from 17 October 2013 to 23 October 2013

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