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| Summer in 1980, I, who was totally unfamiliar with the art world, was enticed by a French sculptress called Niki de Saint Phalle (abbreviated as Niki in the following), and in the same winter, found myself daringly opening an art gallery called Space Niki. I already had a wild dream of setting up Niki's museum. What's life? What for do I exist? Is it for "fighting against ennui", as the novelist Seiko Tanabe once said?1) I also remember the poetic genius Baudelaire described ennui as a monster plaguing life.2) Life and existence, death and non-existence. Niki's world kept on presenting me with such heavy proposition, and without knowing I have become a resident of a thrilling mythological world. I opened Niki Museum in Nasu highland in 1994, and I seriously started thinking, "Is it all right to be just enticed all the time?" "Where is my selfhood?" At first, I was biting Niki's world, but then, I was made to be swallowed by a monster called Niki. Ishould not be content by this. Niki has now "grabbed the world" and is there as "existence" itself. It has been 20 years since I encountered Niki's world, and it seems that I am at a loss treading into a <dynamic labyrinth>.3) It is best to return to the beginning when you are lost. Now, let's go back to the starting point and examine Niki and myself. Niki is a great impact itself that cannot be conveyed by words fully. She is spring water that never gets dry. There, she is light, and here, I am an arrow. There, she is Achilles, and here, I am a turtle following her. There, she is a wild ox, and here, I am a snail. There, dinosaur, and here, mantis facing up to it. The moon and a paper lantern. The temple bell and a soft-shelled turtle. Niki is a poetess, and I am a pilgrim who plods after the poetess along the road of the Cross in tears. The cup of voluptuousness that is emptied at the end of agony belongs to Niki, and only a momentary dream is kept for me. I should stand up for myself here. I declared, "Look, I was a judge in my former life, and I burned you as a witch at the stake." She cannot be defeated easily. She said amusedly, "Oh really? Now I understand why I have been all the time feeling as if I was crucified." "Don't you find it scary?" said I. "I love scary stories!" responded Niki. Obviously, I can never win. I've come to understand that she is in fact a gigantic catfish. She floats in the universe idly and evasively. Nobody can catch her. We were, as a witch and a judge, hating each other as enemies in our former lives. That former relationship turned into a karma, and I am now here to make up for it. Neither as a partner, nor as a collaborator, but as An "accomplice that swallowed destiny," I exist. What's wrong with making Niki Museum in Nasu highland? I never know if the destiny is sweet or sour until it goes through the throat down into the stomach. Let's press the juice of blood out and take the bones out carefully to make soup. You should bite the meat full of golden nutrition well. Don't take your eyes off! She will flee away! Attention! Niki is described as "an eternal rambler between the two poles, Heaven and Hell,"4) who can hide in the tiniest hole, or turn into any creature. Day by day, I repeat playing tag and hide-and-seek, never getting bored. I become the "Fool" in the Tarot deck and start for an adventure, not really knowing what I am searching for.5) |
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| When asked what the main feature of the art of Niki de Saint Phalle is, I would say it is her tremendous radicalness as "an eternal rambler between the two poles, Heaven and Hell"(*1). Her extremely strong and pure colors, her radical forms, her startling inspiration, the extremely large scale of her works, all testify to this feature of tremendous radicalness. In particular, Nana, a principal character of Niki's works, presents a drama which, with its ever-lasting fascination, induces me to enter into that gigantic mythological world, the sacred land of myth. The name Nana was a synonym or variation of ancient mother goddesses of Egypt and the Orient, Inanna, Nanna, Anna, Hannah, Anne, Anne-Marie, Di-Anna, Isis, Ishtar, and so on. Each was a virgin goddess, both the ancestral mother goddess of all the other deities and the grandmother goddess (the earth goddess). She was at once all deities and the sole goddess, while sometimes unexpectedly appearing as a virgin consecrated to a deity or even at time as a prostitute, which suggests the name Nana incorporates all the attributes and existential variations of women. Doesn't it remind us of picture of goddess who is exceedingly joyous and full of festive mood? In contrast to Nana is another important name, Eve. Eve was slso a glorious name of an earth goddess in ancient times, but, with the growing prevalence of Christianity, her status in the mythological world was greatly degraded. Although originally the mother goddess who gave birth to Adam, she was doomed to be expelled from heaven for being a seductress, and thought to be formed from a rib of Adam. She was alienated, hated, persecuted and segregated as a profaning ominous being who brought death into the world, no longer hailed as the mother goddess who brought life into the world. The name of Eve has so far carried a dark, dirty, inferior image(*2). One of the greatest achievements of Niki de Saint Phalle lies definitely in her creation of the figure of Nana. I would like to insist that the rebirth and resurrection of Nana, who was called up from the distant past of millennia and given life by Niki, has put a period to the degrading history of women over the past two thousand years and brought about a glorious turning point. From Eve to Nana, now! This is why we particulary asked Niki herself for the image of Nana as the symbol for the Niki Museum. It has always puzzled me that the names of ancient Oriental goddess, namely Hana, Nanna, and Anna, all have as strong phonetic similarity to the Japanese word for woman, onna. Likewise, is it a mere coincidence that Hana sounds like Hanako( a typical Japanese girl's name)? These similarities amuse me very much. I cannot be too thankful to Niki, who willingly let me use her idea of the Goddess Nana as the symbol of our museum, regardless of my limitation in grasping the artistic world of the great artist. Pierre Restany, Niki de Saint Phalle: Exposition retrospectiv(exhibition catalogue), Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 3 July-1September 1980. |
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| - From Birth to the Age of 22 - Niki de Saint Phalle was born in 1930 between a French father who was very proud of his aristocratic ancestors, and an American mother who was an actress. Since she was a small girl, she had been brought up in New York, and received a very strict Catholic education at a convent school and at home. In those days in America, as in Japan, there existed a number of taboos, such as the issues of God, love, and sex, ethnic hostility, war and massacre in the name of colonization, racial and sexual discrimination. Niki did not hesitate to voice her honest doubt on these issues, and such attitude labeled her as a problem child. Niki was expelled from school or forced to change schools for three times in her mid-teens. Niki married at the age of 18, and gave birth to her eldest daughter Laura. Her beauty attracted attention and she posed for the covers of such prestigious magazines as Life and Vogue. Niki held a rebellious attitude inside that kept on growing since she was little. She started to find the life as a model, which is, after all, just a pretty outlook, increasingly dissatisfactory. Niki chose to become an artist to liberate and heal herself. - Destined Encounter at 25 and Shooting Painting at 30 - 1955 was a year of destiny, when a great turning point arrived for 25-year-old Niki. First, she had a chance to see a fantastic castle made by F. Cheval in Hauterives in the south of France. Cheval (1836-1924) was a postman, who collected unusual stones on his handcart while delivering mail. Taking dozens of years, he eventually created a huge strange castle made of stones. Niki saw this for the first time. Second, she visited Guell Park created by A. Gaudi (1852-1926) in Barcelona, Spain. Niki says, "I was convinced, as if I had received a divine revelation, that I would, too, create an ideal palace in my lifetime."* Lastly, in the same year, Niki met a Swiss man called J. Tinguely (1925-1991), an artist renowned for his iron kinetic art, and he was to become her lifelong artistic partner. In those days, Niki was absorbed in drawing imaginary pictures of cathedrals and castles. Tinguely encouraged her by saying to her, "Technique is nothing. Dream is everything." These words were great morale support for Niki, who had not received any formal art education, and led her artistic activities to bloom. <Shooting Painting> in the early 1960's which used carbines for shooting exposed the ugliness of the ruling hypocritical society detected in church, school, and home.They shocked the society and the art world. Niki could no longer tolerate the absurd situation created by various kinds of prejudice, discrimination, deception, and violence under the male domination. She was filled with violent anger that made her feel almost suffocated. She shifted the power of such explosive anger into her work. Niki's artistic expression became more and more radical and finally found the form of "shooting painting," an expression that belongs to a genius. She describes herself, "Instead of becoming a terrorist, I have become a terrorist in art".** At first, "shooting painting" meant just shooting a board, (or an object wound by wires) which had cans or bags of paint buried under the plaster. When the bullets were shot, the paint splashed and dripped over the work, which thus turns into a bleeding sacrifice of the funeral rite. Niki says, it was "murder without any victim."*** Then, gradually, the meaning of the "shooting painting" changed. The suffocating situations surrounding women were expressed by using ready-made articles. She used high heel shoes, hair rollers, kitchen utensils, plastic toys, tin pistols, air fighters, weapons and arms, countless babies, soldiers, clowns, masks of the world leaders in those days, such as Kennedy and Khrushchev, statuettes of angels and Virgin Mary, devils, monsters, spiders, snakes, artificial flowers, as well as woolen threads and cloths, to create succession of works starting from <Autel des Femmes>(1962), to <Coeur de Monstre>,<King Kong>, and <Sociere Rouge>.**** This period could be called "a productive period of anger". It became clearer and clearer that the object of anger changed from a woman's personal situation to a social situation. Niki confronted the world and "grasped the world." She developed her own expression, but, to one's amazement, it was just a beginning for her. It is not too much to say that the birth of a genius artist that represents the 20th century was formed in this period. Then, the period of anger, whose radicalism had grown rapidly in volume and quality, the period of stormy exorcism named <Shooting painting>, comes to an end quite abruptly. - Nana Power - Niki, who declares that all of her works constitute her personal history, goes on to express the "roles of women" next. <Bride><Pregnancy><Childbirth><Mother>are all series of works that are more objective and full of agony, and they show contrast with <Shooting painting> which released her from depression. These works convey severe self-examination. According to Niki's words, she was creating the works "in great agony".***** Then, she had an inspiration by watching her friend Clarice, who was at the next atelier. Clarice was pregnant and her body expanded and became rounder day by day. "One day," Niki "was suddenly freed," and started to produce round bodied statues of women full of confidence and power called Nana in 1965. She created <Nana Power> and other works of<Nana>series one after another, and they were to be regarded as her masterpiece later. The development of her works thus presents her attitude that has always been sincere. Niki has continuously created excellent work of art since, and, in 1978, she finally started to work on the group of ideal palaces, whose realization had been her lifelong dream, on the hill of Tuscany in Italy. Twenty years later, in 1998, the Tarot Garden was opened to the public. |