Niki de Saint Phalle, girl enraged – The World

The World | 09/18/2014 at 20:10 • Updated 19/09/2014 at 10:24 | By Philippe Dagen

In a report in the early 1960s, which loops through the retrospective devoted to the artist until February 2, 2015 at the Grand Palais, an American journalist dubbed Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) ‘the Calamity Jane of Ar t’ We know why. Calamity Jane was photographed rifle in hand, and often filmed Niki firing on plaster reliefs previously filled bladders color. But the comparison can be taken further. Calamity Jane was used as the scout in the Wild West. Scout is also suitable for the artist. Calamity Jane was a free woman, cleared of male power. Niki de Saint Phalle also, even a scandal. The heroine of the Far West was driven by energy and rare audacity. These concepts are reflected in the heroine of the new realism and feminist revolt.

It is the first retrospective in France, because it took too much time so that it is no longer confined to the Girls and that we take the measure of what it dared. The course comprises 175 works. It is divided – Grand Palais forces – into two floors, and not chronological. The first stage receives regarding women, Girls included. Downstairs there man, target Shots St. Sebastian pierced with large nails – less chic than the arrows. And finally, an evocation of the monumental creations, whose Tarot Garden , in Tuscany, in which she worked from 1979 to 1998.

This last part is particularly successful because q …