Niki de Saint Phalle, Louise Bourgeois & The Blazing World
An observation on two unique and cerebral women artists, and a fictional one.
Hello dear friends,
May is here and in Germany, that means “Frühlingsgefühl” or a feeling of springtime. I enjoy spotting new leaves, fresh grass and flowers springing up everywhere, but for me, Springtime also means finding new inspirations, insights, and new ways to be true to my art.
This includes actively visiting new art and artists or discovering old artists anew. I was thinking a lot about the different expressions in art, especially after visiting the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibit at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt last month. The art was at times visceral, at times joyful, at times completely repellent.
Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) didn’t want to conform in any way to any of life’s standards, and so she tore apart everything - her marriage, her relationships, her art, her health. At the same time, her childlike drawings with their desperate pleas show how vulnerable and lonely she really was. What I loved most from her works though, were her famous Nanas; cheery, big-breasted and large-bottomed women in all possible colours. These Nanas are dancing, sometimes upside down, sometimes with wings and seem so free of all expectations and also of reality. They seem to mock at traditional beauty standards for women, at the preference of white skin and also at the rigid stereotypes that women are expected to follow, while dressing, dancing or merely presenting themselves.
Her more visceral work, on the other hand, shows how truly frustrated she was of the traditional roles assigned to women. As I moved from the bright and doughty Nanas to her other works, lines between past and present, beauty and monstrosity seemed to blur. There were installations of women with all the possible symbols of motherhood and wifedom attached to them - babies, utensils, household articles, houses and furniture - sometimes showing their trauma or their helplessness being stuck in roles they did not want. Another piece shows Kennedy and Khrushchev fused together in a single, inhuman form with two heads, which is obviously both a parody and a scream against war. The bodies are plastered with weapons, planes, human blood, while showing at the same time the corrupt desecration of all war-time politics. I haven’t included any of the pictures of those works here to spare any triggers for sensitive souls; I was fairly disturbed by them myself.
One more of Niki de Saint Phalle’s works, which transfixed me, was an initial sketch for one of her sculptures. This sketch went on to become She - A Cathedral, a monumental sculpture (20 feet tall and 75 feet wide) of a pregnant woman lying on her back. This woman contained inside her: an aquarium, a small movie theatre, play areas for kids, a bar and an exhibition gallery; showing again the immense possibility and power of a woman. It was displayed at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1966.
She - A Cathedral held my attention for more than one reason. Not only was it majestic and awe-inspiring in its design, conception, architecture and execution, but it reminded me of something I had read last year. Siri Hustvedt’s Booker-longlisted novel, The Blazing World.
Siri Hustvedt, feminist, author, essayist and philosopher, wrote The Blazing World in 2014. The book’s female protagonist, Harriet (Harry) Burden, is a struggling artist and a woman in her sixties. She begins the book with a fire and an agony which addresses questions all women have always asked.
“It’s coming up, Harry, the blind and boiling, the insane rage that has been building and building since you walked with your head down and didn’t even know it. You are not sorry any longer, old girl, or ashamed for knocking at the door. It is not shameful to knock, Harry. You are rising up against the patriarchs and their minions, and you, Harry, you are the image of their fear.” - The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt, 2014
And Harry wonders and questions why is it different for women in the art world? (Or every world, really). And why is it only women who must face shame and guilt and embarrassment? She starts an ultimate test of life and of the people around her; people from the art world. She's dancing with life and playing a game with life; waiting to see if life answers back. And it does. Just not in the way Harry expects. Or even the reader expects.
This reminded me again of Niki de Saint Phalle. And of Louise Bourgeois.
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), similar to Niki de S.P. and the fictional Harry Burden, worked on drawings and sculptures depicting the self, women’s bodies, the psyche and showcasing women trapped in roles foisted on them by society.
Her relationships with her father, mother and her children formed a large part of her work. Her famous spider sculptures, now located all around the world, were intended as projections of her mother. She saw the spider as protective, just as her mother had been; and as a symbol of restoration, just as her mother, a tapestry restorer, had been.
While her relationship and attachment to her mother was strong, Louise Bourgeois suffered lifelong from the traumatic relationship with her father, and art was her method of therapy. Her famous Femme Maison (Woman House) works show a woman who has replaced her head and so also her brain, with a house and its duties. She has been reduced to a secondary creature and the kitchen or domesticity has taken supreme importance and possession of her personality.
Siri Hustvedt has shared in various interviews and podcasts that Harry Burden’s character was loosely based on Louise Bourgeois, who has been a lifelong inspiration to Siri herself.
“When mingled with Søren Kierkegaard, the 17th-century natural philosopher Margaret Cavendish, Mary Shelley’s monster in Frankenstein, Milton’s Satan, and heaven knows whom else, my chewed-up and digested Louise Bourgeois returned in the artist character at the heart of my most recent novel, The Blazing World: Harriet Burden, a.k.a. Harry. To be perfectly honest, I was unaware of the degree to which L.B. had influenced H.B. until I began preparing this piece. The unconscious works in mysterious ways.” - A Woman looking at Men looking at Women by Siri Hustvedt, 2016
Maybe Niki de Saint Phalle is one of those unconscious influences? Harry Burden, who believes in the power of the invincibility of women; just like both Niki de Saint Phalle and Louise Bourgeois did in real life. Just like the two real-life artists, this fictional artist also made giant, kinetic woman sculptures and wanted to create, independent of her gender.
“I have three frames of reference. I have the frame of reference of my father and mother, and that of my own experience. I have the frame of reference of my children. And the three are stuck together.” - Louise Bourgeois
What was fascinating for me, in reading about Louise Bourgeois, was how soothing I found most of her works. Her famous Self-Portrait, which she started in 1940, shows a mother and a father with a child in the center, which was made as an homage to her newborn son. This portrait kept evolving till 1990, just as the self and the psyche does and she later added the calming blue background to it, showing she had found her peace in family life. Her absolute individualism also did not belong in any Art Movement of the time, and though her works are often categorized as Surrealism, she is her own genre and a movement unto herself.
For me, the book, The Blazing World, as well as the art of Louise Bourgeois and Niki de Saint Phalle brought up some pivotal questions:
Why do we women demean ourselves?
Why do we let our roles and identity be defined by people other than ourselves?
Why do we say we're not good enough?
Why do we think something is of more value if someone else creates it?
Why did we take that one ignored glance from our fathers, or male professors, or colleagues or whoever and internalize it? Why did we turn it into a hurt and not a triviality?
These are questions to ponder and overcome.
If you’d like to visit the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibit in Germany, it has now moved to the Staedel Museum in Frankfurt. Louise Bourgeois’s works can be visited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London and the Kunstmuseum Basel, among others. As for Siri Hustvedt, she is a brilliant beyond brilliant author, essayist and storyteller. I discovered her because my mom saw an interview of her on BBC and felt sure I'd love reading her works. I read her latest essay collection, which made me a complete fan. And then I ordered The Blazing World, one of her fictional works, which sealed the deal for me.
I hope this intermeshing of art and books today was something that you enjoyed reading about and I would love to hear your thoughts on it. May your Spring be full of artistic endeavours and discoveries too!
Your friend,
Ajita
So so so....beautifully entangled and expressed. My dear, really appreciate what you have done for yourself, reading writing and studying art too!! Delighted to read about your expression on art.....keep writing....