Edited with text by Ruba Katrib. Text by Anne Dressen & Nick Mauss, Alex Kitnick, Lanka Tattersall.
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.
Featured image is reproduced from ‘Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life'.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
New Yorker
Peter Schjeldahl
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.
New York Times
Jason Farago
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.
Hyperallergic
Johanna Sluiter
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.
Galerie
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.
Artforum
Johanna Fateman
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.
Observer
John Reed
Saint Phalle’s work ha[s] always existed in a near past, very now, and future tense.
New Yorker
Peter Schjeledahl
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.
Featured image—a photocollage of scenery for Niki de Saint Phalle's unfinished 1977 children's video, The Travelling Companion—is reproduced from Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life, published to accompany the outstanding show closing today at MoMA PS1—remarkably, the artist's first exhibition at a New York museum, and one of her most expansive shows in the United States. Focused on Saint Phalle’s radical, euphoric and feminist public structures, it collects sculptures, works on paper, films and rarely seen archival materials. "The utopian aspect of Saint Phalle’s work is located in its formal, functional, and cultural hybridity," MoMA PS1 curator Ruba Katrib writes. "While [de Saint Phalle] found inspiration in cultures the world over, her output was distinctive, and it captured the imaginations of adults and children alike. For half a century, working in and out of the spotlight, she developed a practice that defies definition. She continuously honed and reinvented her work without concern for the judgments of her fellow artists or critics." continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 6.75 x 9 in. / 232 pgs / 184 color / 62 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $30.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $40 GBP £26.00 ISBN: 9781942884675 PUBLISHER: MoMA PS1 AVAILABLE: 3/23/2021 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by MoMA PS1. Edited with text by Ruba Katrib. Text by Anne Dressen & Nick Mauss, Alex Kitnick, Lanka Tattersall.
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.
