On the
surface, Niki de St Phalle must have seemed like the perfect wife: model on the
cover of Vogue, intelligent and breeder of two children.
Yet on
reaching her thirties, after a painful nervous breakdown, she abandoned her
marriage and became a full-time artist.
Recognising something powerful within herself, she began to sculpture
the female form.
She
recognised that most images of women had been made by men and she wanted to
celebrate the female form differently from a woman’s viewpoint. Rather than being an object of desire,
it became for her a source of creativity.
“My ‘nanas’ are me, of course, because I am a woman” she said.
She began to
read Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘Seconde Sexe’ who said of women throughout history
“Were either married of by force, seduced,
abandoned or dishonoured”
And who said
of women artists:
“It is easy to imagine how much strength it
takes for a woman artist simply to dare to carry on regardless. She often succumbs to the fight”
And who said
of men:
“Men continuously use force to make her
shoulder the consequences of her reluctant submission”
Her various
nanas represented aspects of women: the child bearers, the bad nanas, the poor
hurt nanas, the whore nanas, the black nanas.
 |
| Mrs Haversham's Dream 1965 |
She called
them Nana – after the infamous prostitute invented by writer Emile Zola, French
slang for a “broad”.
In 1971 Niki
de St Phalle married sculptor Tinguely.
Side by side, they made statues, fountains, mobiles, kinetic paintings,
inspiring people with their creativity. Yet interestingly in India, the
name for creativity is Shiva and the name for creation is Shakti. These two energies must connect and
from this flow of passion brings unlimited creative potential.
Shakti can be
visceral and physical, such as giving birth. It is the hidden power that turns matter into life, the
divine spark, the flow of god’s love.
Only when
Shiva and Shakti are married in you will you be able to enter a sacred marriage
with someone else.
She continued
to make her pop goddesses with bulging curves were partly a metaphor for the
cliché of women as mindless baby machines, but there was more to them – these
curved creatures became iconic, powerful. They represented a powerful new
matriarchal future.
“I love the
round, the curves, the undulation, the world is round, the world is a breast,”
wrote Saint Phalle.
She began to
cover the plaster cast sculptures with polyester resin and to decorate them
with vibrant stripes and colours. Her most infamous Nana was a giant
architectural piece for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1966. The work was a
cathedral sculpture consisting of an enormous woman, legs spread with a giant
gaping vagina. It was 90ft long and entitled Hon (“she” in Swedish). People
would walk into her genitals and inside the figure, where they found a movie
theatre, an aquarium and a gallery full of fake famous artworks. Over 10,000
people flocked to see the work.
She had a
sense of the importance of a woman’s role in society, influenced by Simone de
Beauvoir, who said “A woman does not have the means to create another society:
yet she does not agree with this one”
Instead of
for violence, she used guns as a means to paint, transforming weapons and tools
into creativity. The illogical and
intuitive, feminine aspects so often rendered useless in the running of
societies become valued. Her
outspoken courage and the bombastic nature of her work drove the importance of
her message: man, thoughout history have ignored their guru in woman. They have run the show, tending to
bicker and fight and use guns and bombs to solve problems, putting their faith
into the arms trade.
Yet only when
a human marries Shakti and Shiva within can the world be full of peace, love
and a sacred marriage commence.
So her
encouragement to embrace our feminine side is something of value. Feminist force is for everyone’s good.
The work of
Niki de St Phalle is currently on show at the Grand Palais in Paris.
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