Missouri Botanical Garden - Niki 2008

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Who is Niki? Apr 29, 2008

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On Guide: n2
Sculpture: Arbres Serpent
Location: Spoehrer Plaza
Catherine Marie-Agnes de Saint Phalle was born in 1930 to an aristocratic family in France and raised in New York City. She was a somewhat rebellious child, who preferred to be called Niki. In her early twenties she suffered a nervous breakdown and turned to visual art as a means of survival. Niki became the only female member of Europes most important post-World War II art movement, the New Realists. She collaborated with, and later married, the Swiss avant-garde artist Jean Tinguely.
Niki was a prolific, self-taught artist. Her work included illustrations and shooting paintings on which she fired a rifle at bags full of paint attached to wood or canvas. Niki used tales and myths as a springboard to create fantastic creatures of her imagination. Working freely and spontaneously, she made joyous works to celebrate the diversity of life.
Nikis art is well-known throughout Europe, South America, and Asia, where she traveled for inspiration. This exhibition provides just a brief introduction to her vast creativity. The playful, larger-than-life sculptures presented here are mostly her mosaics and later creationsthe art she made after moving to San Diego in the 1990s.

Want to Get Inside Nikis Head? Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n15
Sculpture: La Cabeza
Location: Lehmann Rose Garden
This six-ton smiling skull was inspired by a trip Niki made to Mexico in the late 1970s.
She liked the cheerful way in which Mexicans deal with the subject of death. The Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead seems to inform La Cabeza as a face of death that is both festive and contemplative. It pulls viewers in as it reflects life back. The piece is an inventory of the materials Niki used, from mother of pearl, to geometric mirrored glass, to the translucent round glass pieces that she called M&M's.
This skull is fully interactive and easily accessible. Go inside to look around or have a seat in its domed meditation room, with its blue sky and moon.

What Are The Skinnies? Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n22
Sculpture: Femme Bleu
Location: Shoenberg Temperate House
Air became part of Nikis artistic palette with her see-through The Skinnies, made of bronze and polyurethane paint. Niki saw New Man is Coming and Femme Bleu as air sculptures that breathe and invite you to look right through them. She linked their breathing and skeletal look with the experiences of her own ailing body.

Why did Niki create smaller pieces? Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n21
Sculpture: Oiseau amoreux
Location: Climatron
Niki was prolific in her production of large-scale sculpture and entire environments of art. But she also wanted to create pieces on a domestic scale that people could have in their homes. Chairs, Grand lphant vase, and even the Oiseau amoureux are examples of this period of her work.
Oiseau amoureux inside the Climatron was originally designed to be a giant kite for a worldwide traveling kite exhibition in 1988. Birds had a constant theme in Nikis workshe said some were immoral, sad, triumphant, hungry...or even in love.

How Did Tarot Influence Niki? Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n21
Sculpture: Star Fountain
Location: Climatron
Two sculptures in this exhibitionStar Fountain and Arbres Serpent (n2)are closely related to Nikis Tarot Garden.
In the 1970s, inspired by the artist Gauds park in Barcelona, Niki dreamed of creating a sculpture garden based on the cards of the Tarot deck used by fortune tellers. An Italian patron offered her land in southern Tuscany, where she completed her Tarot Garden in 1998, just four years before she died. The project took 20 years. It is among the permanent sculpture gardens she created. The others are Queen Califias Magical Circle in Escondido, California, and Golem and Noahs Ark, both in Jerusalem.
Arbres Serpent, combining plant and animal life into one, is based symbolically on the Tree of Life that housed the card of the Hung Man. It was designed to be a complex fountain. The snake appeared in her early images of femininity. In the 1980s, she adopted serpents as her signature motif for a perfume she produced to finance the Tarot Garden.
Star Fountain is not only a monumental woman but also symbolic of the tarot card deck, with its iconic flowing water, stars, and planets. According to Niki, the star represented the wholeness of being, lost in modern civilization, as well as renewal.

Who Are These Musicians? (Black Heroes/Musicians) Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n20
Sculpture: Miles Davis
Location: Cohen Amphitheater
In 1998, Niki began work on a series of Black Hero sculptures, paying tribute to prominent African-Americans. They included jazz musicians Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, who was born and raised just across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis. Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong are not only cultural icons, but also draw upon Nikis early marriage and life in Paris. Her first husband was a musician who was interested in jazz. The young couple was a part of the Paris jazz scene in the late 1950s and early Sixties.
These mosaic musicians are fleshed out with stained and mirrored glass as well as tumbled stones, with gold leaf for the jazz instruments. Notice how the diverse sizes and shapes of the hand-cut mirrors on their trousers affect the textures and perception of color.

Who Are These Musicians? (Black Heroes/Musicians) Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n20
Sculpture: Louis Armstrong
Location: Cohen Amphitheater
In 1998, Niki began work on a series of Black Hero sculptures, paying tribute to prominent African-Americans. They included jazz musicians Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, who was born and raised just across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis. Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong are not only cultural icons, but also draw upon Nikis early marriage and life in Paris. Her first husband was a musician who was interested in jazz. The young couple was a part of the Paris jazz scene in the late 1950s and early Sixties.
These mosaic musicians are fleshed out with stained and mirrored glass as well as tumbled stones, with gold leaf for the jazz instruments. Notice how the diverse sizes and shapes of the hand-cut mirrors on their trousers affect the textures and perception of color.

Why did Niki create smaller pieces? Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n18
Sculpture: Grand lphant vase
Location: Kemper Center circle
Niki was prolific in her production of large-scale sculpture and entire environments of art. But she also wanted to create pieces on a domestic scale that people could have in their homes. Chairs, Grand lphant vase, and even the Oiseau amoureux are examples of this period of her work.
Oiseau amoureux inside the Climatron was originally designed to be a giant kite for a worldwide traveling kite exhibition in 1988. Birds had a constant theme in Nikis workshe said some were immoral, sad, triumphant, hungry...or even in love.

My Memory of Niki Laura Gabriela, Nikis daughter Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n17
Sculpture: Nikigator
Location: Near Kemper Center
My name is Laura Gabriela, and Im Nikis daughter. I remember Niki as the wise Nikigator.
Niki was undaunted by opposition, she wasnt afraid of being attacked. On the contrary she took it all as a response and it stimulated her and it gave fuel to her fire and she knew she that was on the right track and she had more to do and it just kept her going.
As a kid I was a little you know scared sometimes because these artists bring things that are new and there is a lot of hostility that shows up sometimes but I understand that she knew how to play the game of life and she knew how to respond creatively and she never lost her focus and she used the opposition to keep going and Im still learning from that.

Why Did Niki Sculpt Animals? Apr 29, 2008

Show notes

On Guide: n16
Sculpture: Seals
Location: Shapleigh Fountain
Niki said that for many years, a good deal of her work was concerned with bringing joy, color, and an aggressive humor and fantasy to life.
Nikis playful animals were part of her vision of sculpture committed to bringing joy. The colorful mosaics that cover them appeal to both the eye and the body. Niki felt it was very important that both adults and children interact with her sculptures. She loved to see children climb on these animals. Feel free to touch, sit, crawl on, or enter them. Their edges are rounded so that kids can climb on them safely. The concave lap of Cat (n14) is an intimate refuge in which you can curl up.
Nikigator, Seals, Guardian Lions, and Cat descend from the mosaic animals with which Niki surrounded the artist Mario Bottas Ark in their collaborative interpretation of the Noahs Ark story, at the childrens zoo in Jerusalem.

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Missouri Botanical Garden – Niki 2008

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