Art &Technology | |
- Pop Art - Saint Phalle |
Niki de Saint Phalle is an artist, who is often identified with her Nana sculptures. Less well known are her much more radical shooting performances. Saint Phalle made a big leap from her career as a model posing for Vogue, Harper's Bazar, Life magazine and other magazines to the art clubs and museums of the 60ies and 70ies..
Niki de Saint Phalle. Shooting Action 1963 |
Fig.: Niki de Saint Phalle: Filmstill from a movie by Peter Schamoni Fig.: Niki
de Saint Phalle: Shooting Action. 1963
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In her shooting performances she symbolically took revenge on her father by setting up an over-life size human sculpture which held invisibly bags of colour. By hitting the sculpture with the bullets of a rifle and thereby opening the colour bags the visitors of the show were enabled to put colours upon the formerly white sculpture. "In 1961 I shot at: Daddy, all the men, small menr, tall men, important men, fat men, men, my brother, society, church, school, my family, my mother, all the men, Daddy, myself, men again." (Niki de Saint Phalle)
At the age of
24 Nike de Saint Phalle suffers from a nervous breakdown. This also marks
the starting point for her fight against her former identity. An outbreak
of creativity following this breakdown reinstitutes her energy to continue
living and points towards her change of style, which has been described
by her as replacing "from outside to inside" by "from inside
out". Saint Phalle tries to express her fears and horrors explicitly
in her paintings and her actions.
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