Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life - by Ruba Katrib (Paperback)

About the Book

Catalogue published for the exhibition organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Râeunion des Musâees Nationaux-Grand Palais, with the participation of the Niki Charitable Art Foundation, Santee. Held at the Grand Palais, Galeries Nationales, Paris, France, September 17, 2014-February 2, 2015 and Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, February 27-June 11, 2015.

Book Synopsis

A new exploration of Niki de Saint Phalle's colorful and compelling public structures, with archival materials and more

This volume brings newfound attention to Niki de Saint Phalle's (1930-2002) work in architecture and public sculpture, and the commercial products such as perfume and jewelry that she produced to fund these ambitious projects.

Featuring a wide selection of images of her architectural works and rarely seen archival materials, this book places these projects within the context of her larger boundary-defying practice, drawing connections with politically charged works such as the films and books she made in response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

Charting Saint Phalle's many efforts to radically open her practice beyond the confines of the art world, it serves as a survey of her practice from the 1960s until the early 2000s. Edited and with an essay by exhibition curator Ruba Katrib, the publication features new scholarship by Anne Dressen and Nick Mauss, Alex Kitnick, and Lanka Tattersall.

Review Quotes

In her sculptures, drawings, paintings, performances, films, writings, playgrounds, habitable structures, and public persona, Saint Phalle presented an oracular--if sometimes fragmented, contradictory, and perplexing--vision of utopia, inventing the iconography, erecting the monuments, and dreaming the fantastic architecture of a new society.--Johanna Fateman "Artforum"

Saint Phalle mastered gloss techniques for preserving their painted services--in black and white and sizzling color--outdoors. Nothing about her work jibed with anything then current in art. Today, as categorical distinctions among art mediums and styles deliquesce, it comes off as heroic.--Peter Schjeledahl "New Yorker"

Saint Phalle's work ha[s] always existed in a near past, very now, and future tense.--John Reed "Observer"

Her emphasis on working in and for the public sphere, not only to make her work accessible to a broad range of audiences--particularly demographics that are typically ignored in art...this is inspiring today for artists who are seeking new ways of working, but also in how she was able to make an impact.-- "Galerie"

In Niki de Saint Phalle's vibrant, multidimensional universe, Saint Phalle raises all the issues that adults learn to tolerate and "live with," but which children constantly question.--Johanna Sluiter "Hyperallergic"

It's one of the most surprising [books] of the season, with a heavy emphasis on her later, monumental work in parks and other outdoor spaces: walk-in structures, somewhere between architecture and public art, where caves are covered in mirrors and monsters' pink tongues turn into slides.--Jason Farago "New York Times"

The avant-garde artist was one of the late twentieth century's great creative personalities, with traits that once shadowed and now halo her importance.--Peter Schjeldahl "New Yorker"