Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s

by Jill Dawsey and Michelle White

Amelia Jones, Kyla McDonald, Ariana Reines, Alena J. Williams, and Molly Everett

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s
Shelve It

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

A timely reassessment of the artist’s early performances and feminist sculptures, affirming their radical engagements and art historical significance

This volume is a focused look at two bodies of work, the Tirs (“shooting paintings”) and Nanas (“dames”), in the experimental 1960s practice of the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002). Alongside a poetic response to the work, four essays treat Saint Phalle’s oeuvre as works of radical performance and feminist art, as well as highlighting her transatlantic projects and collaborations. A chronology with photo-documentation and known participants details for the first time all Tirs shooting events in Europe and the United States, and another timeline recaps Saint Phalle’s life in the 1960s. 

Tirs were made by firing a .22 caliber rifle at the surfaces of paintings. The bullets pierced bags of pigment, aerosol paint cans, or even food embedded in dense assemblages covered in painted plaster. Saint Phalle’s increasingly liberated female figures with outstretched arms, curvaceous forms, and powerful poses developed into her well-known Nanas, an evolution contemporaneous with the rise of a Euro-American feminist movement.

Distributed for the Menil Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego


Exhibition Schedule:

Menil Collection, Houston
(September 10, 2021–January 23, 2022)

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
(April 9–July 17, 2022)
  • ISBN10 0300260105
  • ISBN13 9780300260106
  • Publish Date 14 September 2021
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Yale University Press