‘I DECIDED TO BECOME A HEROINE’

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE, 1930–2002

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For decades Nike de Saint Phalle was a phantom. Seen fleetingly, mostly in black and white photographs, in the early 1970s she was one of the few exceptions to that old furphy about great artists being men. Saint Phalle, Yayoi Kusama, Joan Mitchell, Marisol, Georgia O’Keeffe, later Louise Bourgeois — it was a select group.

From the 1960s, Saint Phalle had a huge reputation in Europe. Huge was the operative word: the standard illustration showed Hon — which means ‘she’ in Swedish — an enormous recumbent pregnant figure shown at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in 1966, with visitors queuing at the open portal of the vagina, waiting to be swallowed by cheerful, powerful femininity. This subversive image alone staked Saint Phalle’s claim to lasting notice, even notoriety. Yet Saint Phalle is not one of today’s feminist art heroines — perhaps her work is too elemental, emotional, even cute for today’s post-theoretical interests? It was certainly often too ambiguous for earlier feminists, and perhaps remains so today.

Nevertheless, Saint Phalle remained an alluring figure. Originally from a wealthy family, bilingual in English and French, she was beautiful, sexy and headstrong — as a child she was nick-named by her mother for the Greek goddess of victory. Saint Phalle wore many disguises, as she affirmed:¹ glamorous Vogue model (upfront in the catalogue, with gloves and cigarette); a bohemian who left her marriage and children for art; an autodidact with fragile psychic and physical health, but prodigious energy for painting, drawing, film, jewellery, sculpture, artists’ books, even collaborating with Roland Petit on the ballet Éloge de la folie (1966). She was a shooter (more on that later); the devoted partner of artist Jean... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Niki de Saint Phalle pointing her gun, 1972. Still from the film Daddy. Black and white photograph with colour retouching. Photograph © Peter Whitehead. © Niki Charitable Art Foundation, Santee, USA.

Niki de Saint Phalle, Heads of State (Study for King Kong), Spring 1963. Paint and masks on wood panel, 122.5 x 198 x 21cm. Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Gift of the artist, 2000. © Niki Charitable Art Foundation, Santee, USA. Photograph © BPK Berlin, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Michael Herling / Benedikt Werner.