February 9, 2025 • 56 mins
Have you ever seen the colorful, playful sculptures near the Pompidou Center in Paris? Those bold and joyful creations are the work of Niki de Saint Phalle, an artist who turned personal pain into vibrant public art.
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In this episode, "Discovering Niki de Saint Phalle: From Personal Struggles to International Fame," Annie Sargent and Elyse Rivin explore the fascinating life of this groundbreaking artist. Niki de Saint Phalle came from a wealthy background but faced deep personal struggles, including childhood trauma and strict societal expectations. Instead of letting these experiences define her, she channeled them into art that shocked, inspired, and delighted.
Annie and Elyse discuss her early experiments with radical "shooting paintings," where she literally fired a gun at canvases to create explosive works. They also dive into her most famous sculptures, including the Nanas, her oversized, curvy, dancing women that celebrate femininity and freedom. Niki wanted art to be accessible to everyone, so she placed many of her works in public spaces, where people could interact with them.
Want to see her work in France? They talk about the Stravinsky Fountain in Paris, her major contributions to museums, and her largest masterpiece, the Tarot Garden in Italy.
Tune in to hear how Niki de Saint Phalle challenged the art world, embraced bold colors, and left a legacy of joy and strength. Listen now!
Table of Contents for this Episode
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Annie (00:15):
This is Join Us in France, episode 532.
Cinq cent trente deux.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversationwith Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided
Walks about the fascinating lifeand work of Niki de Saint Phalle.
(00:41):
Discover how this artist transformedpersonal trauma into colorful and
whimsical public art that continuesto captivate audiences worldwide.
From her early struggles to her innovativeand controversial art practices, learn
why Niki de Saint Phalle remainsan enduring figure in the art world.
And even if you hadn't heard of herbefore today, if you visited Paris,
(01:04):
you've probably seen some of her publicart near the Pompidou Center in Paris.
It's a beautiful plaza anda favorite of children.
This podcast is supported by donorsand listeners who buy my tours and
services, including my ItineraryConsult Service, my GPS self-guided
tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app,or take a day trip with me around the
(01:25):
southwest of France in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at myboutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
And Patreon supporters get new episodesas soon as they are ready and ad-free.
If that sounds good to you, be likethem, follow the link in the show notes.
For the magazine part of the podcast,after my chat with Elyse today,
(01:46):
I'll discuss plans to move some ofthe icons of the Paris Olympics to
different neighborhoods in Paris.
And I'll also answer a questionthat's been asked many times on
the podcast, where should I rent acar if I want to drive out of Paris
without navigating the city center?
It turns out the answerhas changed recently.
(02:16):
Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse (02:17):
Bonjour, Annie.
Annie (02:18):
You have prepared a very interesting and weird topic for today.
Elyse (02:24):
Well, actually, I am very, very, very excited to do this today.
We're going to talk about an artist,a woman artist, who basically worked
during the second half of the 20thcentury and who is now considered to
be pretty much internationally known,and that is Niki de Saint Phalle.
Annie (02:46):
Right.
So, I don't know very much abouther other than the fact that I've
seen some of her installationsin Paris by the Beaubourg Center.
You have a permanent...
Elyse (02:59):
Fountain.
Annie (02:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I've seen an expo of hersin Toulouse, a few years back.
Elyse (03:06):
I think it was two or three years ago.
Annie (03:09):
Right.
It wasn't that long ago.
Yeah.
And it was beautiful.
I was really impressed.
I think she does gorgeous things,but I don't know very much about her.
So I'm hoping you can enlighten me.
Elyse (03:20):
Well, here we go.
Let's talk about this very,very, very interesting woman.
She's known as Nikki de Saint Phalle.
In fact, her real name was CatherineMarie Agnès Phalle de Saint Phalle, and
she was the daughter of a French count.
Annie (03:39):
Oh, wow.
Elyse (03:39):
And an American heiress.
Annie (03:41):
Okay.
Oh, wow.
Elyse (03:43):
So she was born in 1930 in Neuilly, which is where a
lot of rich people are born.
Annie (03:49):
Yeah.
Elyse (03:51):
And she didn't come from the most wonderful family, it was
a rather dysfunctional family,even though they were aristocrats.
And she was basically given over to hergrandparents, and her family decided to
move to the States where her mother wasfrom, when she was about three and a half.
So even though she was born in France, sheactually grew up in the United States, and
(04:13):
lived there until she was a young adult.
Annie (04:16):
Oh, okay.
So she, she didn't stay inFrance her whole childhood.
Elyse (04:20):
No, not at all.
But she was brought up bilingualand was both a French citizen
and an American citizen.
And so after growing up partly inConnecticut, and then partly on the
Upper East Side of Manhattan in a veryposh neighborhood, she decided to move
back to France and basically hang outfor a while in France and in Europe.
(04:42):
But before that, let me just say acouple of things about her growing up.
It turns out that her, her motherwas, sounds like an extremely
unhappy and neurotic woman.
Niki de Saint Phalle was one offour children, and her mother
apparently was this extreme,severe disciplinary type of person.
And she was sent to these verystrict, all girls Catholic
(05:03):
schools that were very repressive.
So she had a childhoodthat was not very happy.
Annie (05:09):
I bet.
Yeah.
Elyse (05:10):
And, it turns out, it didn't come out until much, much later towards almost
the end of her life when she was 64,which means in 1994, when she wrote her
memoirs, she tells the fact that when shewas 11, she was molested by her father.
Annie (05:29):
Oh, damn.
Elyse (05:30):
So, what happened with all of this was that, I don't know if anybody
knows exactly what her life was likein terms of being a student or anything
else, but because she was extremelyunhappy, she got out of her family
life by eloping at the age of 18.
Annie (05:48):
Okay.
So at that time she was living in...
Elyse (05:50):
She was living in the States.
She was living in New York.
She eloped with someone who was, someonewho had actually been a childhood friend
who came from the same background, thesame kind of upper class background.
Someone named Harry Chapman,who happens to still be alive.
And I don't know very muchabout him either, but clearly
he was two years older than her.
So she was 18 and he was 20.
(06:11):
And the way she got out of thismiserable family existence was
literally they ran off and eloped.
And because they were both from thekind of background where they really
had money and clearly they werenot cut off, the money was not cut
off from them, they went to Europe.
Annie (06:30):
Okay.
Elyse (06:30):
And her new husband was a budding poet, kind of writer, artist, poet.
This is, we're talking 30, this is,we're talking 1948, so really just
the years right after World War II.
And for the first three orfour years, two things happened
that were very significant.
One was that they justbummed around Europe.
Annie (06:53):
Wow.
Elyse (06:53):
They just bummed around Europe.
They went from one country toanother, even though they had friends
in France, and she of course stillhad friends and family in Paris.
But the other thing that happened, veryquickly, was that she had two children.
Annie (07:06):
Okay.
Well, yeah, they're... Imean, yeah, of course, yeah.
Elyse (07:09):
You know?
So by the time she was 23,which is 1953, she had two
children that she did not want.
Annie (07:18):
Oh, that's bad.
Elyse (07:20):
That she basically gave to her other grandparents in France,
to take care of for a while becausethe two of them were living this
extremely strange bohemian life.
This doesn't make her a likableat first, I have to admit, this
is just, you know, she was clearlysomeone who had lots of issues.
But what happened was that, with herhusband, they met and became very
involved in a group of artists andwriters in Paris, who were very,
(07:44):
very important and who in terms ofthe history of art in France for the
second half of the 20th century, wereamong the most important and famous.
And they were a group of artists whocalled themselves 'The New Realists'.
Don't ask me to explain that, that'sjust the name they gave themselves.
But they included some writers, andshe found that this world that was
(08:05):
not just the bohemian world, but theartistic world attracted her a lot.
Annie (08:10):
Okay.
Elyse (08:10):
And I think, if I understand correctly, having read a whole lot
about her more than once, she realizedthat this is a way for her to channel
some of her extreme emotions andfeelings, that was probably, we could
say, in a more positive way, you know.
However, a very significantthing happened, right after
she moved permanently to Paris.
(08:32):
And that was in the end of 1953,she was sent to a psychiatric
hospital, private clinic.
I won't say a psychiatric hospital.
She was sent to a private clinicbecause she had had severe depressions.
And she was given electric shock.
Annie (08:46):
Okay.
Elyse (08:47):
If you imagine all of this, you would say, well, this doesn't
bode well for anybody in terms of whathappens to the rest of their life.
But this is what happens, I'm quotingher, this is something she said, and
since she was bilingual, she wrote a lotof stuff in English, so I don't have to
worry about my incorrect translation.
She said (09:02):
I started to paint while with the crazies.
Right.
And through this process turned madnessinto something good, I learned to
translate into painting my feelings,fears, violence, hope, and joy.
Annie (09:17):
Wow.
So this was like music.
I mean, this is art therapy beforewe called it art therapy, I guess.
Elyse (09:24):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so what happened was, when shecame out of the clinic, and I don't,
it doesn't sound like she was there forthat long, I mean, it sounds like it
was a few months or something like that.
She decided that shewanted to be an artist.
And it made me think a little bit of FridaKahlo, who also became an artist because
of suffering, of physical suffering, butalso someone who'd had no background as
(09:47):
an artist whatsoever and started paintingwhile she was in hospital recuperating.
So it's very similar in that kind of way.
Now, the difference is that Nikide Saint Phalle not only had lived
through this very strange life,rather perturbed, turbulent kind
of existence, and was hanging outwith this group of real artistic
bohemians, but she was also gorgeous.
(10:10):
And she was noticed by somefamous photographers, and she
started working as a model.
And she wound up, actually, beingon the cover of some of the most
important magazines like Vogue and Elle.
Annie (10:24):
Wow.
That's yeah.
That's...
Elyse (10:26):
If you see pictures of her, you know, I mean, everybody
has different tastes, but she wasreally quite, quite beautiful.
And so strange is that she developed afirst notoriety as a model, as being this
very beautiful kind of eccentric woman.
And then when she decided to tryand do some artwork, because she
(10:47):
had the connections and I'm sure itdid help, and because of her husband
knowing all these people as well,she was allowed to participate in
some artistic events with this group.
Annie (10:57):
Okay.
Elyse (10:57):
The reason I'm saying that is because we're talking still about
the 1950s when women were not allowedinto many of these artistic groups.
Annie (11:06):
In France they weren't.
Elyse (11:08):
No, I mean, this was still a hard thing to do, you know?
And so what happened was that she madeher name by doing something that of course
sounds very strange, and it was, I'msure, very, very strange, because this
is the beginning of the time when artistswere doing things like performances and
installations, which of course has nowbecome something sort of banal that young
(11:29):
artists do pretty much all the time.
Half the time you have no ideawhat they're doing, but that,
you know, that's the thing.
But she decided to, I think herintention at the beginning, and I'm
not sure, but I think her intentionat the beginning was to shock.
So what she did was she set up theseperformances where she had a rifle.
I think it was like a BB,what do you call that?
Annie (11:49):
A BB gun?
Elyse (11:50):
BB Gun, you know, with pellets.
And she had these canvases that wereset up on the other side of this room.
So of course this wasin front of a public.
And she had these bags of paint thatwere attached to the canvas on the back.
And she would shoot the canvas andthen create a painting by having
the paint burst out of these bagsand splatter all over the canvases.
Annie (12:15):
How bizarre.
Elyse (12:16):
Yeah, these were called les tirs, which simply means shoot, right?
Annie (12:21):
Yeah, the shoots.
Elyse (12:22):
The shoots, yeah.
And so this is how she became famous.
Annie (12:26):
Well, she made some noise.
Elyse (12:29):
She made some noise, right?
And what's interesting is that, ofcourse she didn't hurt anybody, this is
just, it was very, very unusual, huh?
But it was thanks to the fact that shedid these tirs, and they were televised.
A couple of them were actually televised.
Yeah, they were televised.
This group of neorealists decided thatthey would admit her to the group.
Annie (12:52):
Now that she can get publicity, we want her.
Elyse (12:55):
Exactly.
This was a way that they could getmore publicity for the entire group.
But from this point on, she really turnsout to be a very, very interesting artist.
Her life was turbulent and probablyextremely complicated almost all
the time, but she really becameinvested in being an artist.
(13:16):
And so, over the years, and this reallytakes us into the 1970s, when she's
actually in her forties, she decidedthat what she wanted to do, because
she had no background as an artist,she had no training as an artist, she
discovered that what is called outsiderart, which is basically art done by
(13:38):
people who have no background, whichhas a certain derogatory quality.
You know, a lot of people willsay, Oh my God, no, these people
are not trained as artists.
She sided with these people.
She decided that this was what shethought was the most interesting kind
of art, the art that came out of sortof an instinctive desire to create
things, and it didn't have to be thissnobbery that comes from going to an
(14:00):
art school and things like that, and shewas very interested in portraying women.
Annie (14:06):
Okay.
Elyse (14:06):
And had no qualms about considering her art as a woman's art,
and what she said was very interesting.
She said, in most people's mouthssaying an art is a woman's art
is like making it inferior.
She said, it's not inferior, it's just awoman's point of view in making the art.
That's all it is.
(14:27):
And just like a man makes art,that's from a man's point of view.
And what she decided to dowas start making sculptures.
Now at one point she really starteddoing these sculptures, I don't
know, but she went to see the FacteurCheval, which we've both talked about.
Right, we... oh, I can't remember whatepisode, I'll put in the show notes.
But we did a whole episode about FacteurCheval, which was also a very different,
(14:52):
untrained, and very creative person.
And very eccentric.
And she also in her travelingaround Europe with her still
first husband, discovered Gaudi.
Annie (15:03):
Ah, yeah.
Elyse (15:04):
And one of the things that she was inspired by with Gaudi was
the combination of the curved forms.
And the use of mosaic, and theuse of color, and the use of
glass, and all of these things.
And she was very attracted to thisas a form of art, this kind of thing.
But she decided that she wantedto put it to the service of
(15:26):
creating things that were aboutthe woman, and about women's forms.
You know, there have been a couple of maleartists, painters, who have done lots of
paintings of these very rounded women.
She decided to make themphysically into sculptures.
And so this is, of course, is now whatshe is best known for is this, all
these, these women, first small andthen bigger, and then bigger and then
(15:48):
bigger, till she got to the biggestone, which is over 15 meters long.
And which I actually had the chanceto see because in 2014 there was a
huge retrospective of her work atthe Grand Palais in Paris and they
had reconstructed it for the exhibit,because there's a huge, huge space
(16:09):
in the center of the Grand Palais.
And I was, I know I was just tellingyou a couple of minutes ago, it's
this enormous woman, very round.
The legs are very round, the body'svery round, the breasts are very round,
everything's very, it's colorful ascould be, it's covered with all kinds
of interesting little pieces of materialand bright, bright, bright colors.
And the opening that allows you togo in and visit on the inside is
(16:34):
the opening in between her legs.
Annie (16:36):
Aha.
Okay.
Interesting.
Elyse (16:38):
She said that what she wanted to do was take the female form
and make it into something that isjust a thing that is just playful.
It doesn't have any terrible significanceto it in one way or the other.
Annie (16:52):
Demystify, I guess.
Elyse (16:54):
That's the right word.
That's exactly right.
To demystify it and at the sametime play with the roundness of it.
This is one of the things thatshe does with all of her work.
And so over the years she startedcreating these figures, and at the same
time she was very interested in fairytales, and in the idea of monsters.
(17:15):
The kinds of monsters that you haveas illustrations, for instance, in
children's books and things likethat, where, you know, like the things
that go squeak in the night, youknow, and all those kinds of things.
And she said that one of the thingsshe wanted to do, obviously, all of
this going back to her childhood, wasshe wanted to create these... these
oversized figures that because of beingcolorful and being so exaggerated,
(17:41):
would be playful at the same time, andthat children would be able to touch.
She wanted people to be able to touch herwork and therefore get past their fears.
So she's, a lot of her work, allof her life had to do with fear
and the idea of getting over fear.
And then the idea of being joyfulby the color and everything.
So, she made many,many, many, many pieces.
(18:04):
Some of her sculpture is small, it'sthe kind of piece you can put on a
pedestal inside a room somewhere.
But a lot of her work is very big,and as her work progressed over the
years, and she became really more andmore famous, she decided that what
she wanted more than anything elsewas to create work in public spaces
(18:26):
where it was accessible to everybody.
This became her, basically her secondobsession, that she didn't want work in
museums where you had to pay to go in.
She wanted her work to be in parks,in public outdoor spaces, where
people could walk over, they couldclimb on them, they could touch them.
And of course, one of the things thathappened by doing work like this was that
(18:50):
a lot of people started saying, well, youknow, we're sure this is fun, but this
is not art, you know, I mean, this isthe whole controversy about what is art.
And she was very adamant that all of thisis indeed art, it's just that this is art
that is available to anybody and doesn'thave to be for the elite, and I think
that this was just one of those thingsthat she dealt with her entire life.
Annie (19:12):
Right, she was probably just focused on sharing the stuff.
Going back to the children bit.
I have, when I went in Toulouse,it was actually funny because my
husband was having cataract surgeryat a clinic right by Les Abattoirs,
where they... No, no, it was LesAbattoirs, where they had the show.
(19:32):
And so I walked over there and whenI walked over there, I didn't have a
reservation, but there was a long line,including a big group of children that
some a couple of ladies who probablyrun a daycare center brought the kids.
And some of the people look like, oh whatare these young children going to do here?
Because they were all underfive, you know, well under five.
(19:55):
And they loved it.
They love it, but they couldn't touch.
You couldn't.
No, you couldn't touch at that exhibit.
But a lot of the stuff, herinstallations that are out in public,
you can touch and kids love it.
It's beautiful.
Elyse (20:08):
That's interesting too, to point that out, because of course,
inside a museum, it's a no no, right?
And that was one of the thingsshe wanted to get away from.
So she explicitly chose public spacesto do her larger pieces and wanted them
to be pieces that could be touched,climbed on, even go inside of, some of
(20:29):
them are actually very, very strange,these sort of huge, strange, monster
looking kinds of things, or big women.
Some of the pieces, this is fascinating.
So as part of the show notes, I wrotedown, I had gone online and made a
list of a lot of the most importantor well known pieces, she did in
the early 1960s, she was invited bysomebody, I have no idea who, to do
(20:55):
a public piece in Hanover, Germany.
And so what she did was she did anoutdoors piece of three of these
women, very... you know, they'rebig, they're round, they're very
colorful, they all kind of look likethey're almost dancing, you know.
Annie (21:09):
And they're shiny.
The color is very shiny and very bright.
I don't know how she made them.
The process of making themmust have been interesting.
Sorry, I interrupted.
Elyse (21:18):
No, no, no, but I'll talk, it's a good thing you mentioned that because
we'll talk about that in a second.
But what happened was, I don't knowwho gave her permission to do this, but
she set these up, she finished them.
But of course, by this time shewas, you know, she had her own big
studios where she could do her work.
They were all set up, there arelots of pictures of them, you
can find them almost anywhere.
And she called them Les Trois Nanas, whichof course is the word in French for, it's
(21:41):
an informal word for women, basically.
Annie (21:44):
Nana is, normally it's a good looking woman.
Elyse (21:46):
It's a good looking woman.
These three very voluptuous, youknow, very kind of.. And, so this is
the beginning of the 1960s, so... youknow... a group of people in Hanover
started a petition to get rid of them.
They said that this was, you know,not art, that it was scandalous.
And what happened was that it createdthis kind of debate in Hanover, Germany.
(22:10):
And in the end, there were morepeople who voted to keep the
sculptures than there were thatwanted to get rid of the sculptures.
Annie (22:16):
Oh, good.
Elyse (22:17):
And now the irony is that in the museum in Hanover, has one
of the largest collection of herwork of any place in the world.
Annie (22:24):
Very good.
Elyse (22:26):
It became the symbol of Hanover, the three nanas, you know.
And this was the beginning of herdoing these very, very big, very, very
flamboyant outdoor pieces, which of courseshe has done in a lot of different places.
Sometimes invited by a town, orsometimes she just asked for permission.
(22:47):
She would go and find a placethat was outside in public.
She did two pieces inJerusalem of all places.
One of them called The Golem.
And the Golem is a wordthat it means the monster.
Annie (22:58):
Okay.
Elyse (22:59):
She was invited to do a piece, this is also in the middle of the 1960s,
after she started to really become famous.
And apparently, at first theywanted her to do it on the
grounds of this very big museum.
And she said, no.
No, no, no, no, no, it has to be out in apublic space where everybody can go over,
can sit on it, can climb it, can touch it.
Annie (23:19):
That's really, I mean, a sign that she was really confident
about the quality of the materialand that it would stand up to time.
Elyse (23:29):
Yes.
So the problem is, and you reallysaid the magic word, asking
about what she did this with.
She worked with polymers.
Was talking about an artist who's becomepretty much famous, internationally
famous, starting in the 1960s.
Nobody knew too much about thetoxic effect of a lot of these
(23:49):
things that she was working with.
So she was working with sprays.
She was working with polymers.
And she was working with allkinds of materials that turned
out to be extremely toxic.
And so what happened to Niki de SaintPhalle is that by the time she was in her
late thirties, and she never smoked, ever.
(24:11):
By the time she was in her late thirties,she started to have respiratory problems
from the work that she was doing andthe materials that she was working with.
And even though I suppose that at somepoint she started wearing masks, she
never stopped using these materials.
And in the end she died in theyear 2001 at the age of 71.
(24:36):
But in the last 10 years of herlife she suffered enormously from
all kinds of horrible respiratorythings and lung problems because
of the materials that she had used.
The toxicity of the things she usedwas terrible, terrible, terrible.
And yet she continued.
She just refused to stop.
Annie (24:55):
Right, so she knew it wasn't good for her.
Elyse (24:58):
By this time.
By the time she was almost 40,she was already having problems.
She had huge emphysema.
She had all kinds of things.
In the end she died ofrespiratory failure.
And she suffered enormouslythe last few years of her life.
But I'm sure by that time she hadchanged some of the materials,
but it was basically too late.
(25:18):
It was just impossible for her torecuperate what she had lost in terms of
her lungs and the capacity to do that.
In the 1970s, she married her secondhusband, a sculptor, an artist named
Jean Tinguely, who was actuallySwiss, and who was famous for doing
what are called kinetic sculptures.
(25:39):
And the one that's the fountain thatis next to Pompidou Center is a joint
venture of the two of them becauseit's got her colorful sculptures
and his pieces that turn and spraywith the water and everything.
Annie (25:52):
Very nice.
Elyse (25:53):
And they did a lot of work together.
They collaborated a lot on pieces.
In the end, I don't think they, as acouple, they were together for about
10 years and then they were no longeractually a couple, but he became and
stayed her partner of choice for manyprojects through the rest of her life.
Anyway, they just stayed very, very close.
Annie (26:15):
Did she ever become rich?
Elyse (26:18):
She was rich.
Annie (26:19):
Well, okay, but...
And yes, and she became richin terms of her artwork.
And the way she did, and it was veryclever of her, actually, was that
in order to have the money to dothese monumental pieces, she made
a lot of small pieces that sold.
Elyse (26:37):
There are, you know, hundreds and hundreds of museums, ironically,
that have some of these smaller, verycolorful sculptures, but also, at
the same time she was doing all ofthis, she did a lot of work on paper.
And she did these very beautiful drawingsand we were just looking at some of the
pictures because we did both see thesame retrospective here in Toulouse.
(26:58):
Starting in the 1970s she becamevery politically active in terms of
using political, social issues in herwork, partly because she had several
friends who were dying of AIDS.
And partly because of various eventsthat were going on in the world.
So she spent time in the United States.
(27:19):
She would go back and forth.
She lived for years and years inParis, but she really would go back
and forth from one country to the next.
And she became very involved indealing with issues of racism,
dealing with problems with AIDSand the phobia of homosexuality.
And she took on all of thesesubjects in her drawings, not in the
(27:41):
big sculptural pieces, which werebasically neutral in that sense.
You know, they're colorful, they'rebig and all of that, but she was
very explicit in the paperwork.
And some of it is just verybeautiful of these gorgeous
little drawings, very colorful.
Everything's always filledwith color in her work.
But with text that is veryexplicit against racism, against
(28:03):
all kinds of prejudices, againstwar, against guns, ironically, of
course, after the initial thing.
Yeah, the tir right, you know.
These pieces are incollections everywhere.
And these, of course, sold fora huge amount of money because
they're originals, it's not printedout, you know, in multiple copies.
And they're gorgeous.
Annie (28:23):
And they have things to say.
And she drew on them.
She colored them.
I guess if she hadn't been so famous,nobody maybe would have paid attention
to these pieces, but she was very famousand had proved that she could do art.
Elyse (28:39):
Absolutely, she really could.
And her color is, it's because some ofthese pieces, especially the pieces that
are on paper, if you don't get up closeto read the text, it's just joyful.
It's just beautiful color and littlefigurines and things like that all over
the place and it's lovely to look at.
Annie (28:57):
I'll share photos of a lot of these things on social media, on
Facebook and on Instagram, I'm alsoon BlueSky and let's see, on Threads.
Huh?
I never talk about those, but I am.
Elyse (29:10):
Good for
Annie (29:10):
you.
You can see the photos on those.
Elyse (29:12):
Basically what happened was as she got older, she became more
ambitious in the size of her projects.
And so she took on these enormousmammoth, mammoth projects that
of course she had to finance.
Because a lot of themshe financed herself.
She wasn't given grant money,she wasn't given money by
cities or anything like that.
Annie (29:32):
I figured she had lots of cash anyway from being
rich, I mean, family money.
Elyse (29:37):
Yeah, except that it's not usual for an artist to self finance everything.
It really is not.
Yeah, really.
And of course, the biggest piece thatshe ever did, which was finished sadly
posthumously because she, when she diedin 2001, it was almost finished, but not
quite, is this piece that we were justtalking about called the Tarot Garden.
Annie (29:59):
Ah, yes.
I had never heard of thisand you told me all about it.
Fantastic.
I want to go see it now.
Elyse (30:04):
I can't wait to go.
I just actually can't, it's agood excuse to go to Italy anyway.
It's a huge, several hectares of land.
And she created sculptural figures thatare exaggerated, kind of monster like,
but incredibly colorful, with mosaic,and pieces of glass, and pieces of paint.
(30:24):
And they're unbelievable to look at.
And every one of them isone of the 22 tarot cards.
Annie (30:32):
Right.
So tarot cards are probably notsomething everybody's heard of.
They are kind of a, okay, so in France,you can play tarot, and it's just a game.
It's a bit of a complicatedcard game that requires special
cards because you play in suits.
But it's also somethingthat's used for divination.
(30:53):
And I've played tarot a lot, in my youth.
I don't even remember the rulesanymore because it's been so long,
but it's a very common kind of deckof cards that you take to school,
and at during lunch break, you wouldplay tarot or belotte, whichever one.
belotte is played with a regulardeck of cards, but Tarot, you
need a special deck of cards.
Elyse (31:15):
I think in the States, tarot is known for the
divination, for fortune telling.
Annie (31:20):
Yeah, I've never met an American who played the game tarot.
But in France you do.
Elyse (31:24):
But I remember when I was much younger, I had somebody read my
cards, you know, and that was like...
Annie (31:29):
Ha ha ha.
I see death!
Elyse (31:32):
Exactly.
You don't want to have certaincards come up, you know?
I was like... It's veryfascinating, you know.
In 1994, she wrote her memoir, and thatis when she talks for the very first
time publicly about what happenedto her when she was a child at home.
She talks about the treatmentof her by her mother, she talks
about the abuse by her father.
(31:55):
And it's very interesting becausethe two children she had were
brought up by her ex husband.
She obviously saw them asadults later on in her life.
And you think that she was 20, 21 whenshe had these children, but she basically
lived her life away from the children.
Annie (32:11):
Might have been a good thing, actually, if she was a bit crazy, and from
that kind of background... Yeah, maybethat was a better thing for the kids.
Elyse (32:19):
Probably, I mean, I went online, she now has their adult
grandchildren, so they survived allof this without too much trouble.
My guess is, I would assume, I havereally no idea, that as she got older,
she was able to be with them, but theywere already adults, you know, I mean, by
that time, so it was a whole other story.
She really, by the time we get into the1980s, she is really world famous and
(32:44):
she has public work all over Europe.
She has public work in the UnitedStates, many pieces, many, many pieces
in California, she also has a lot ofpublic work of all places in Japan.
Annie (32:57):
Wow.
Elyse (32:58):
Which is very interesting.
Very interesting to see wheresome of her work has gone.
And so, in the 1990s, when she was inentering, basically the end of her 60
something, I mean, because she died whenshe was just 71, but she was really sick.
The lung problems, the respiratoryproblems really meant that she
was in and out of hospital alot, but she kept on working.
(33:22):
And I was reading something yesterdaywhere it said that in the last six
months of her life, she spent almostall the time in the hospital, but she
was already preparing new projects.
She didn't stop.
She never stopped.
She wanted to create and she wanted, thiswas what she wanted to leave to the world
was these major outdoor public pieces.
(33:43):
And a couple of them were of course,like the last one that she did in
the States, which was in Escondido,which is where she had lived, we're
finished in the year after her death.
In France, she had the hugeretrospective in 2014, which I had
the chance of actually going to see.
I did know about her work already.
I don't remember why or where, Ihave no idea, but I knew about her
(34:08):
work before I went to see the show.
But when you go to see the show, like theone that we had here, the one in Paris,
it had pretty much the same things ashere, but some of the huge pieces that
they couldn't carry and bring to a placelike Toulouse, the huge monumental pieces.
But she has big piecesjust about everywhere.
(34:28):
And there were three museumsthat have a lot of her work.
One of them is in Nice.
Annie (34:33):
Oh, which one?
Elyse (34:35):
A Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Annie (34:37):
Oh, and I've been to that.
I don't remember it, but Okay.
Okay.
Elyse (34:41):
She donated 170 works to the museum the year she died, as part of her legacy.
I assume that a lot of thepieces are on paper and smaller
pieces, but they're there.
Annie (34:52):
That might be why I don't remember them.
Elyse (34:54):
I think she has just two or three big outdoor pieces, maybe in
the gardens surrounding the museum.
Annie (35:00):
Yeah, because when you see her big pieces, they're hard to miss.
Elyse (35:03):
Absolutely, they're hard to miss, yeah.
She created a museum using her ownmoney in the Freiburg, Switzerland,
which is where her Jean Tinguely,her second husband was from.
And he died very suddenly in 1991,and they were at the process of
working on a project together thatthey had, you know, they'd been
working together for almost 30 years.
(35:25):
And so she decided that she was goingto make sure that there was a museum
that would have his work, and it is nowcalled the Niki de Saint Phalle - Jean
Tinguely Museum in Freiburg, Switzerland.
And it has many pieces by both of them.
And then the largest collection ofher work is in the Sprengel Museum in
(35:45):
Hanover, Germany, the city that at firstdid not want her work, yeah, and is now
very, very proud of the fact that theyown the biggest collection of her work.
Annie (35:56):
And you list a few more Sun God in San Diego.
Elyse (36:00):
Yes.
Annie (36:01):
The Moon in Bria Mall in California.
Elyse (36:04):
The Great Amorous Bird in Switzerland, in Nendrisco, I have no
idea where that is in Switzerland.
She did a lot of birds,interestingly enough.
Annie (36:12):
And some of her smaller sculptures have birds and snakes.
And the birds and snakes arealways very colorful and very,
they're not frightening to me.
And the women, and the very large women,you know, I'm like, Hey, I like these
ladies, they look like they're dancing.
They have their arms up andthey look like they're dancing,
(36:33):
celebrating, having a good time.
They're not frightening in any way.
Elyse (36:38):
No, and I think especially with the women, because she has women that
are upright dancing, she has women thatare lying down, she has women in all
kinds of very strange positions, but theyseem to be celebrating what a woman is.
There's just something about them,the roundness of them, the movement
of them, that they're very colorful,they're very joyful and all of that.
(36:59):
There's a big, apparently there'sa huge collection of her pieces
in a museum in Stockholm as well.
And Stockholm was one of the firstcities to ask her to come and do some
pieces for them, even before Hanover did.
So it's very interesting to see whereshe was invited to go and then where
she basically said, Oh, can I come here?
(37:20):
You know, can I get like the Tarot Garden?
She chose the place.
Annie (37:23):
She must have been a really interesting person to talk to.
So what, how did she do this?
She picked up the phone and called thecity and said I want to talk to the
mayor and I want to put a statue, youknow, a massive statue here or something?
I don't know.
Elyse (37:37):
I mean, certanly by the 1980s she was famous enough that I think
she could do something like that.
But then, of course, they wouldhave to offer her a public space.
But if I remember correctly, andI may not remember this exactly
correctly, she knew some, there's anItalian architect named Mario Boto,
who was a very good friend of hers.
(37:58):
They worked together on some things.
He's very famous as acontemporary architect.
And apparently, he told herabout this piece of land.
I don't know if it was a piece of landthat he knew about that, or he had, he was
from this area, but he's the one that gaveher the idea of going to this particular
place and doing this huge Tarot Garden.
(38:18):
And so he helped, I think he helpednegotiate to get the land for her.
You know, so that she could do it.
And it's very interesting becauseit says that she explicitly
said it has to be free.
So when she died, not all 22 pieceswere finished, almost all of them,
but not the last couple were finished,but they were finished by, you know,
(38:39):
with her instructions afterwards.
And it's run by the Niki deSaint Phalle Foundation, which
means it drains money because youdon't pay to go and visit this.
She wanted to make sure it was free,but it is only open half a year because
they have to do a lot of upkeep on thepieces because they're made of millions
(39:00):
of pieces of glass and mosaic and ceramic.
And when you look at thesepieces, you can't even imagine the
work that went into doing them.
Annie (39:08):
Well, and outside, I mean, they get a beating, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, just imagine, like lookingaround my house, I built a wooden
fence a few years back and itlooks like it needs to be redone.
Because it's just sitting outside all day.
So anything you do outside isgoing to need some maintenance.
(39:29):
Yeah.
Elyse (39:30):
Absolutely.
And these pieces, especially the TarotGarden, I'm not sure some of the others
too, I think towards the end, these areconcrete on an armature, on a metallic
frame, covered with mosaics, so theweight of them, can you imagine what
that is, you know, between the glass,the ceramic, the cement, everything
else, these are huge pieces that take alot of technical know how to get done.
Annie (39:53):
Right, so you have to have the know how of a contractor, of a builder,
of a sculptor, but then the artsybit, which is very, very important.
I wonder if people think that her art wasa bit, it's so friendly and joyful, and
because she was a, I mean, she had herdemons, I'm sure she was a dark person.
(40:15):
She had some dark timesin her youth, especially.
So is it too light?
Is it too, you know, like...
Elyse (40:23):
That's the, it's so, that is actually interesting because
that's, I added that just as a littlebit of a thing at the very end.
I actually know people in the artworld, I won't mention who, because
it doesn't matter to anybody outthere anyway, who dismiss her work,
on the grounds that she's it's toouser friendly, it's too approachable,
it's too colorful, it's too simple.
(40:44):
I, with all of my background and mytraining, I can't stand that attitude, I
really can't, because I think that justbecause work is accessible, just because
work is colorful, just because work doesnot have to be, is not obscure and dark.
I mean, there are things that can beobscure and dark can be interesting
(41:05):
for other reasons, but I, I thinkthat it's a total snobbery to say
that this is not worth lookingat because it is not like that.
Annie (41:15):
Well, the guys who were hanging bicycles and toilets up on walls were
about the same time frame, right?
Elyse (41:21):
No, they were earlier.
They were a lot earlier.
The 20th century was a century basicallyof enormous upheaval and provocation,
and doing things to basically...At first, it was just to shock.
She even said, you know, she saidat first when she started doing
all this stuff, even the shootingwith the gun, it was to shock.
It was to provoke.
(41:42):
It was to see how people would react.
But she didn't hurt anybody,or do anything like that.
It was just that like, oh, this is really,you know, some people will say it's
stupid, some people would say it's silly.
But then she started really refiningher ideas of why she wanted to do art.
And that is when it reallygets to be interesting.
And honestly, having seen theretrospective in the Grand Palais and
(42:03):
then the one we saw just a couple ofyears ago here in Toulouse, when you see
the variety of form, the variety of stylein terms of whether it's paper, whether
it's small pieces, whether it's biggerpieces, whether some of it is very serious
and talks about very serious issues.
One of the things that you take away fromall of this is that she was able to do
(42:24):
this and still maintain the exuberanceof the color and everything else.
I just think it's wonderful.
Annie (42:31):
I think it's beautiful stuff.
You know, I'm a simple person,and I love that children look
at this and it makes them smile.
It makes them happy to see it.
Even very young children, like youcan't explain to very young children
the concept behind a piece, they justhave to like it or not, you know?
Elyse (42:51):
Exactly.
Annie (42:51):
And there's a lot to like in what she made.
And I think she made the worlda better place, even though
she had a pretty rough start.
So, yay for Niki de Saint Phalle.
Elyse (43:02):
Yeah.
Yay for Niki de Saint Phalle.
Yes, indeed.
Annie (43:06):
And we need more like that.
Because, I think if you take awalk in a park, or in a city, and
there's a plaza or something withsome beautiful piece, beautiful
colorful piece, it makes life better.
It just does.
I don't know why it does, but it does.
Elyse (43:21):
It does, you know?
If you look at some of the pictures,some of the pieces that are out there,
she did these monsters where the tongueturns into a slide that the kids can
crawl up on, the ears are sticking out.
I mean, if you take a look at itcarefully, it's really monsters,
you know, I mean, they really are.
Yet, the combination of the colors,the materials that are used, and
(43:42):
the fact that you can go on it andtouch it, she said, by making them
touchable, and you can crawl on it, itmakes the fear of whatever it is that
you have fear of, you know, go away.
I mean, that's basically the bottom line.
So you're right.
I think that a lot of this work thatis really so colorful and interesting
came out of some very dark places, butboy, she produced enormous amounts of
(44:07):
work in the, basically the 50 yearsthat she was able to be an artist.
Annie (44:11):
She conquered.
Elyse (44:12):
She conquered.
Annie (44:13):
Thank you so much, Elyse.
That was very interesting.
Elyse (44:16):
Thank you, Annie.
It was fun.
Annie (44:17):
Merci beaucoup.
Au revoir.
Again, I want to thank my patrons forgiving back and supporting the show.
Patreon supporters get new episodesas soon as they are ready and ad-free.
If that sounds good to you, be likethem, follow the link in the show notes.
(44:39):
And of course, patrons getmany more exclusive rewards for
supporting this show, you cansee them at patreon.com/joinu s.
And I have just one new Join Us in FranceChampion to thank this week, Catherine
who didn't share her last name, but joinedat the yearly Groupie du Podcast patron.
(45:02):
Thank you, Catherine.
And to all my current patrons, it iswonderful to have you on board in the
community of travel enthusiasts andfrancophiles who keep this podcast going.
And it's going to be even more importantgoing forward because France is in a bit
of a pickle when it comes to a budgetand the debt, and they are putting in
(45:24):
new rules to try and collect more taxes.
And unfortunately, people likeme who run very small businesses
are getting hit pretty hard.
I hope they change the rules quicklybecause it just passed yesterday.
So this is all brand new.
We will see if we have enough of alobby to get this change, but right now
they're going to really hit us hard, soyour support is much, much appreciated.
(45:47):
And to support Elyse goto patreon.com/Elysart.
This week I published a list ofmy favorite restaurants around
Notre Dame de Paris, with photosand an explanation of why.
And it's not so much what I share,but the fact that I'm available to
patrons who want to chit chat withme or who want to ask me questions.
(46:09):
My updated Île de laCité tour is now live.
It was pretty good before, and nowit's even better, because who doesn't
want to be guided through the storiestold by the doorways of Notre Dame?
People pass through there without,you know, they look and they think,
Oh, it's pretty, but they have noidea what... what the stories are.
I can tell you what the stories are.
I hope you enjoy it.
(46:30):
And if you bought it in the past, youcan delete the old version of that
VoiceMap tour and get the new one.
It's free for peoplewho've already bought it.
And of course, podcast listeners get abig discount for buying these tours from
my website (46:44):
join usinfrance.com/boutique to do that, anything you want to
buy from me, it's at the boutique.
If you're thinking about a tripto France and have a hard time
deciding what to do, I can help youmaking some important decisions, I
do one on one consultations on Zoom.
There are two levels of support,and you can also see about that
(47:05):
at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Okay, let's talk about theiconic symbols of Paris.
If you remember the Olympics, itwasn't that long ago, the Paris
2024 Olympics, they had iconicsymbols that they were displaying.
And those, some of those mightfind a new home in La Chapelle
(47:26):
District of the 18th Arrondissement.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo hassuggested relocating the statues
of the 10 notable French women.
They were prominently featured in theopening ceremony to Rue de la Chapelle.
The idea is to create a lasting tribute toa historically working class and immigrant
(47:48):
neighborhood, an area that has seen alot of transformation in recent years.
This is definitely not a touristy partof Paris, but they want to gentrify
it, is really what's happening.
And so far it's worked.
The Olympics have done a lot of goodin that part of the North of Paris.
And so hopefully it will continue.
(48:09):
The statues themselves representkey figures in French history.
Women who have made an impact in science,politics, literature, and social progress.
So placing them in a public spacewhere people walk by all the time
could be a great way to keep theirstories alive beyond the games.
Now, what about the Olympicrings and the Olympic cauldron?
(48:31):
That's a bit less certain.
The rings were displayedon the Eiffel tower.
They've been a big conversation piece.
What's going to happenwith them we don't know.
We don't know very much.
We don't even know if they'llbe in Paris permanently or not.
As for the cauldron, it was litin the Tuileries Gardens, instead
of a traditional stadium setting.
(48:52):
There's still debate overwhere it should end up.
Some people think it should remain in apublic space, as a reminder of the games,
but no firm plans have been announced.
So while the statues are almostcertainly heading to La Chapelle,
the fate of the other major Olympicsymbols is still up in the air.
Okay, for those of you who would like torent a car in Paris so you can go explore
(49:16):
the Loire Valley or anywhere outsideof Paris, here's what you need to know.
You've heard me say that driving in Parisis a terrible idea and very stressful,
even if you're used to driving inlarge cities, because in Paris, they
have different rules than in the restof France, or the rest of the world.
They are unique.
(49:36):
Their own thing.
So if you're used to driving, likein France, Canada, the US, Germany,
by that, I mean, the left hand sidesteering wheel, then you yield to traffic
coming from your left in a roundabout.
In Paris, you yield totraffic coming from the right.
And that makes the mess you canwitness around the Arc de Triomphe.
(49:58):
But that's hardly the only mess in Paris.
I was near the Les Invalides, there'sa roundabout in front of the Invalides,
same thing, right hand side priority.
People don't understand how these works.
French people who didn't learnhow to drive in Paris anymore,
don't know how to do those either.
So it's a mess.
I learned how to drive in Toulouse,and I taught driving in Toulouse as
(50:21):
well, years and years ago, back whenwe still had a few of those right
hand side priorities, in all ofFrance, we still had some in Toulouse.
They've all been converted to regularroundabouts with yielding to the left.
In Paris, they're not makingthat change, yet, perhaps never,
(50:41):
and so it's very different.
So if you have a young driver wholearned how to drive in Toulouse, driving
to Paris, they don't get it either.
So it's... it's a big mess.
Most places in the world, whenyou enter a freeway or a belt
route, you yield to traffic that'salready on the freeway, right?
In Paris, the people enteringthe freeway have priority, which
(51:05):
is why they act like jerks.
So don't drive in Paris and in the innerbelt of Paris, if you look at a, if you
zoom out on a map of Paris on Google, youcan see Paris has two belt routes, really,
the inner one, you don't want to be there.
You just don't want to be there.
I used to say, rent your careither at CDG, that's the airport,
(51:27):
Charles de Gaulle airport, orone of the portes, west of Paris.
Porte Maillot was often recommended.
Well, there's an evensimpler solution now.
Take Metro line 14 to the airport.
Now you'll need to pay the 13 Eurospecial airport Metro ticket to do that.
And then set your GPS to Normandy,the Loire Valley, or Strasbourg, or
(51:50):
Toulouse, or even if you're going Northof Paris, say you're going to Lille,
which is due North, your GPS should nottake you through Paris central at all.
Orly airport is South of Paris andit's surrounded by freeways that
can take you in any direction, andGPSs are usually smart enough to
(52:11):
keep you away from city centers.
So if I'm ever in a situation whereI need to rent a car in Paris, that's
what I'll do, rent from Orly airport.
You can get to it fast and safe.
You know, I have a problem with the RERto Charles de Gaulle Airport, because
they haven't put in real securitythat stops thieves from grabbing
(52:32):
bags out of the hands of unsuspectingvisitors who've just arrived.
And I don't feel comfortablerecommending that you take that.
Now, if you listen to thepodcast, you've heard about this.
What happens is the RER betweenCDG and Paris, there are some
that don't make any stops.
There are some that do make stops.
If it makes a stop somewhere thedoors will open, some thief, or
(52:56):
usually it's two of them, thieveswill rush in, grab bags, rush out.
The door's closed.
The RER moves on andyou've lost your luggage.
Okay?
This happens every day, dozensof times, and there's not
enough security to stop it.
So, that's why I recommend thatif you're going to take the RER
(53:17):
between CDG and Paris, you only takethe direct RER because then that
problem is not likely to happen.
I have to say also that the Metrois a bit more reliable than the
RER generally speaking, it's abrand new Metro, a very old RER,
you know, yeah, it's more reliable.
So personally I'd go to Orlyairport to pick up my rental car.
(53:40):
My thanks to podcast editors,Anne and Christian Cotovan,
who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the podcast, an episodewith Hannah Compton called Baby Moon in
Paris, and yes, it's about having a tripto Paris while pregnant, very pregnant,
and have a great time all the same.
And remember, patrons get an ad-freeversion of this episode, click on the
(54:02):
link in the show notes to be like them.
Thank you so much for listening.
And I hope you join me next time sowe can look around France together.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
(54:26):
no derivatives license.
This is Join Us in France, episode 532.
Cinq cent trente deux.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversationwith Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided
Walks about the fascinating lifeand work of Niki de Saint Phalle.
(00:41):
Discover how this artist transformedpersonal trauma into colorful and
whimsical public art that continuesto captivate audiences worldwide.
From her early struggles to her innovativeand controversial art practices, learn
why Niki de Saint Phalle remainsan enduring figure in the art world.
And even if you hadn't heard of herbefore today, if you visited Paris,
(01:04):
you've probably seen some of her publicart near the Pompidou Center in Paris.
It's a beautiful plaza anda favorite of children.
This podcast is supported by donorsand listeners who buy my tours and
services, including my ItineraryConsult Service, my GPS self-guided
tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app,or take a day trip with me around the
(01:25):
southwest of France in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at myboutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
And Patreon supporters get new episodesas soon as they are ready and ad-free.
If that sounds good to you, be likethem, follow the link in the show notes.
For the magazine part of the podcast,after my chat with Elyse today,
(01:46):
I'll discuss plans to move some ofthe icons of the Paris Olympics to
different neighborhoods in Paris.
And I'll also answer a questionthat's been asked many times on
the podcast, where should I rent acar if I want to drive out of Paris
without navigating the city center?
It turns out the answerhas changed recently.
(02:16):
Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse (02:17):
Bonjour, Annie.
Annie (02:18):
You have prepared a very interesting and weird topic for today.
Elyse (02:24):
Well, actually, I am very, very, very excited to do this today.
We're going to talk about an artist,a woman artist, who basically worked
during the second half of the 20thcentury and who is now considered to
be pretty much internationally known,and that is Niki de Saint Phalle.
Annie (02:46):
Right.
So, I don't know very much abouther other than the fact that I've
seen some of her installationsin Paris by the Beaubourg Center.
You have a permanent...
Elyse (02:59):
Fountain.
Annie (02:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I've seen an expo of hersin Toulouse, a few years back.
Elyse (03:06):
I think it was two or three years ago.
Annie (03:09):
Right.
It wasn't that long ago.
Yeah.
And it was beautiful.
I was really impressed.
I think she does gorgeous things,but I don't know very much about her.
So I'm hoping you can enlighten me.
Elyse (03:20):
Well, here we go.
Let's talk about this very,very, very interesting woman.
She's known as Nikki de Saint Phalle.
In fact, her real name was CatherineMarie Agnès Phalle de Saint Phalle, and
she was the daughter of a French count.
Annie (03:39):
Oh, wow.
Elyse (03:39):
And an American heiress.
Annie (03:41):
Okay.
Oh, wow.
Elyse (03:43):
So she was born in 1930 in Neuilly, which is where a
lot of rich people are born.
Annie (03:49):
Yeah.
Elyse (03:51):
And she didn't come from the most wonderful family, it was
a rather dysfunctional family,even though they were aristocrats.
And she was basically given over to hergrandparents, and her family decided to
move to the States where her mother wasfrom, when she was about three and a half.
So even though she was born in France, sheactually grew up in the United States, and
(04:13):
lived there until she was a young adult.
Annie (04:16):
Oh, okay.
So she, she didn't stay inFrance her whole childhood.
Elyse (04:20):
No, not at all.
But she was brought up bilingualand was both a French citizen
and an American citizen.
And so after growing up partly inConnecticut, and then partly on the
Upper East Side of Manhattan in a veryposh neighborhood, she decided to move
back to France and basically hang outfor a while in France and in Europe.
(04:42):
But before that, let me just say acouple of things about her growing up.
It turns out that her, her motherwas, sounds like an extremely
unhappy and neurotic woman.
Niki de Saint Phalle was one offour children, and her mother
apparently was this extreme,severe disciplinary type of person.
And she was sent to these verystrict, all girls Catholic
(05:03):
schools that were very repressive.
So she had a childhoodthat was not very happy.
Annie (05:09):
I bet.
Yeah.
Elyse (05:10):
And, it turns out, it didn't come out until much, much later towards almost
the end of her life when she was 64,which means in 1994, when she wrote her
memoirs, she tells the fact that when shewas 11, she was molested by her father.
Annie (05:29):
Oh, damn.
Elyse (05:30):
So, what happened with all of this was that, I don't know if anybody
knows exactly what her life was likein terms of being a student or anything
else, but because she was extremelyunhappy, she got out of her family
life by eloping at the age of 18.
Annie (05:48):
Okay.
So at that time she was living in...
Elyse (05:50):
She was living in the States.
She was living in New York.
She eloped with someone who was, someonewho had actually been a childhood friend
who came from the same background, thesame kind of upper class background.
Someone named Harry Chapman,who happens to still be alive.
And I don't know very muchabout him either, but clearly
he was two years older than her.
So she was 18 and he was 20.
(06:11):
And the way she got out of thismiserable family existence was
literally they ran off and eloped.
And because they were both from thekind of background where they really
had money and clearly they werenot cut off, the money was not cut
off from them, they went to Europe.
Annie (06:30):
Okay.
Elyse (06:30):
And her new husband was a budding poet, kind of writer, artist, poet.
This is, we're talking 30, this is,we're talking 1948, so really just
the years right after World War II.
And for the first three orfour years, two things happened
that were very significant.
One was that they justbummed around Europe.
Annie (06:53):
Wow.
Elyse (06:53):
They just bummed around Europe.
They went from one country toanother, even though they had friends
in France, and she of course stillhad friends and family in Paris.
But the other thing that happened, veryquickly, was that she had two children.
Annie (07:06):
Okay.
Well, yeah, they're... Imean, yeah, of course, yeah.
Elyse (07:09):
You know?
So by the time she was 23,which is 1953, she had two
children that she did not want.
Annie (07:18):
Oh, that's bad.
Elyse (07:20):
That she basically gave to her other grandparents in France,
to take care of for a while becausethe two of them were living this
extremely strange bohemian life.
This doesn't make her a likableat first, I have to admit, this
is just, you know, she was clearlysomeone who had lots of issues.
But what happened was that, with herhusband, they met and became very
involved in a group of artists andwriters in Paris, who were very,
(07:44):
very important and who in terms ofthe history of art in France for the
second half of the 20th century, wereamong the most important and famous.
And they were a group of artists whocalled themselves 'The New Realists'.
Don't ask me to explain that, that'sjust the name they gave themselves.
But they included some writers, andshe found that this world that was
(08:05):
not just the bohemian world, but theartistic world attracted her a lot.
Annie (08:10):
Okay.
Elyse (08:10):
And I think, if I understand correctly, having read a whole lot
about her more than once, she realizedthat this is a way for her to channel
some of her extreme emotions andfeelings, that was probably, we could
say, in a more positive way, you know.
However, a very significantthing happened, right after
she moved permanently to Paris.
(08:32):
And that was in the end of 1953,she was sent to a psychiatric
hospital, private clinic.
I won't say a psychiatric hospital.
She was sent to a private clinicbecause she had had severe depressions.
And she was given electric shock.
Annie (08:46):
Okay.
Elyse (08:47):
If you imagine all of this, you would say, well, this doesn't
bode well for anybody in terms of whathappens to the rest of their life.
But this is what happens, I'm quotingher, this is something she said, and
since she was bilingual, she wrote a lotof stuff in English, so I don't have to
worry about my incorrect translation.
She said (09:02):
I started to paint while with the crazies.
Right.
And through this process turned madnessinto something good, I learned to
translate into painting my feelings,fears, violence, hope, and joy.
Annie (09:17):
Wow.
So this was like music.
I mean, this is art therapy beforewe called it art therapy, I guess.
Elyse (09:24):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so what happened was, when shecame out of the clinic, and I don't,
it doesn't sound like she was there forthat long, I mean, it sounds like it
was a few months or something like that.
She decided that shewanted to be an artist.
And it made me think a little bit of FridaKahlo, who also became an artist because
of suffering, of physical suffering, butalso someone who'd had no background as
(09:47):
an artist whatsoever and started paintingwhile she was in hospital recuperating.
So it's very similar in that kind of way.
Now, the difference is that Nikide Saint Phalle not only had lived
through this very strange life,rather perturbed, turbulent kind
of existence, and was hanging outwith this group of real artistic
bohemians, but she was also gorgeous.
(10:10):
And she was noticed by somefamous photographers, and she
started working as a model.
And she wound up, actually, beingon the cover of some of the most
important magazines like Vogue and Elle.
Annie (10:24):
Wow.
That's yeah.
That's...
Elyse (10:26):
If you see pictures of her, you know, I mean, everybody
has different tastes, but she wasreally quite, quite beautiful.
And so strange is that she developed afirst notoriety as a model, as being this
very beautiful kind of eccentric woman.
And then when she decided to tryand do some artwork, because she
(10:47):
had the connections and I'm sure itdid help, and because of her husband
knowing all these people as well,she was allowed to participate in
some artistic events with this group.
Annie (10:57):
Okay.
Elyse (10:57):
The reason I'm saying that is because we're talking still about
the 1950s when women were not allowedinto many of these artistic groups.
Annie (11:06):
In France they weren't.
Elyse (11:08):
No, I mean, this was still a hard thing to do, you know?
And so what happened was that she madeher name by doing something that of course
sounds very strange, and it was, I'msure, very, very strange, because this
is the beginning of the time when artistswere doing things like performances and
installations, which of course has nowbecome something sort of banal that young
(11:29):
artists do pretty much all the time.
Half the time you have no ideawhat they're doing, but that,
you know, that's the thing.
But she decided to, I think herintention at the beginning, and I'm
not sure, but I think her intentionat the beginning was to shock.
So what she did was she set up theseperformances where she had a rifle.
I think it was like a BB,what do you call that?
Annie (11:49):
A BB gun?
Elyse (11:50):
BB Gun, you know, with pellets.
And she had these canvases that wereset up on the other side of this room.
So of course this wasin front of a public.
And she had these bags of paint thatwere attached to the canvas on the back.
And she would shoot the canvas andthen create a painting by having
the paint burst out of these bagsand splatter all over the canvases.
Annie (12:15):
How bizarre.
Elyse (12:16):
Yeah, these were called les tirs, which simply means shoot, right?
Annie (12:21):
Yeah, the shoots.
Elyse (12:22):
The shoots, yeah.
And so this is how she became famous.
Annie (12:26):
Well, she made some noise.
Elyse (12:29):
She made some noise, right?
And what's interesting is that, ofcourse she didn't hurt anybody, this is
just, it was very, very unusual, huh?
But it was thanks to the fact that shedid these tirs, and they were televised.
A couple of them were actually televised.
Yeah, they were televised.
This group of neorealists decided thatthey would admit her to the group.
Annie (12:52):
Now that she can get publicity, we want her.
Elyse (12:55):
Exactly.
This was a way that they could getmore publicity for the entire group.
But from this point on, she really turnsout to be a very, very interesting artist.
Her life was turbulent and probablyextremely complicated almost all
the time, but she really becameinvested in being an artist.
(13:16):
And so, over the years, and this reallytakes us into the 1970s, when she's
actually in her forties, she decidedthat what she wanted to do, because
she had no background as an artist,she had no training as an artist, she
discovered that what is called outsiderart, which is basically art done by
(13:38):
people who have no background, whichhas a certain derogatory quality.
You know, a lot of people willsay, Oh my God, no, these people
are not trained as artists.
She sided with these people.
She decided that this was what shethought was the most interesting kind
of art, the art that came out of sortof an instinctive desire to create
things, and it didn't have to be thissnobbery that comes from going to an
(14:00):
art school and things like that, and shewas very interested in portraying women.
Annie (14:06):
Okay.
Elyse (14:06):
And had no qualms about considering her art as a woman's art,
and what she said was very interesting.
She said, in most people's mouthssaying an art is a woman's art
is like making it inferior.
She said, it's not inferior, it's just awoman's point of view in making the art.
That's all it is.
(14:27):
And just like a man makes art,that's from a man's point of view.
And what she decided to dowas start making sculptures.
Now at one point she really starteddoing these sculptures, I don't
know, but she went to see the FacteurCheval, which we've both talked about.
Right, we... oh, I can't remember whatepisode, I'll put in the show notes.
But we did a whole episode about FacteurCheval, which was also a very different,
(14:52):
untrained, and very creative person.
And very eccentric.
And she also in her travelingaround Europe with her still
first husband, discovered Gaudi.
Annie (15:03):
Ah, yeah.
Elyse (15:04):
And one of the things that she was inspired by with Gaudi was
the combination of the curved forms.
And the use of mosaic, and theuse of color, and the use of
glass, and all of these things.
And she was very attracted to thisas a form of art, this kind of thing.
But she decided that she wantedto put it to the service of
(15:26):
creating things that were aboutthe woman, and about women's forms.
You know, there have been a couple of maleartists, painters, who have done lots of
paintings of these very rounded women.
She decided to make themphysically into sculptures.
And so this is, of course, is now whatshe is best known for is this, all
these, these women, first small andthen bigger, and then bigger and then
(15:48):
bigger, till she got to the biggestone, which is over 15 meters long.
And which I actually had the chanceto see because in 2014 there was a
huge retrospective of her work atthe Grand Palais in Paris and they
had reconstructed it for the exhibit,because there's a huge, huge space
(16:09):
in the center of the Grand Palais.
And I was, I know I was just tellingyou a couple of minutes ago, it's
this enormous woman, very round.
The legs are very round, the body'svery round, the breasts are very round,
everything's very, it's colorful ascould be, it's covered with all kinds
of interesting little pieces of materialand bright, bright, bright colors.
And the opening that allows you togo in and visit on the inside is
(16:34):
the opening in between her legs.
Annie (16:36):
Aha.
Okay.
Interesting.
Elyse (16:38):
She said that what she wanted to do was take the female form
and make it into something that isjust a thing that is just playful.
It doesn't have any terrible significanceto it in one way or the other.
Annie (16:52):
Demystify, I guess.
Elyse (16:54):
That's the right word.
That's exactly right.
To demystify it and at the sametime play with the roundness of it.
This is one of the things thatshe does with all of her work.
And so over the years she startedcreating these figures, and at the same
time she was very interested in fairytales, and in the idea of monsters.
(17:15):
The kinds of monsters that you haveas illustrations, for instance, in
children's books and things likethat, where, you know, like the things
that go squeak in the night, youknow, and all those kinds of things.
And she said that one of the thingsshe wanted to do, obviously, all of
this going back to her childhood, wasshe wanted to create these... these
oversized figures that because of beingcolorful and being so exaggerated,
(17:41):
would be playful at the same time, andthat children would be able to touch.
She wanted people to be able to touch herwork and therefore get past their fears.
So she's, a lot of her work, allof her life had to do with fear
and the idea of getting over fear.
And then the idea of being joyfulby the color and everything.
So, she made many,many, many, many pieces.
(18:04):
Some of her sculpture is small, it'sthe kind of piece you can put on a
pedestal inside a room somewhere.
But a lot of her work is very big,and as her work progressed over the
years, and she became really more andmore famous, she decided that what
she wanted more than anything elsewas to create work in public spaces
(18:26):
where it was accessible to everybody.
This became her, basically her secondobsession, that she didn't want work in
museums where you had to pay to go in.
She wanted her work to be in parks,in public outdoor spaces, where
people could walk over, they couldclimb on them, they could touch them.
And of course, one of the things thathappened by doing work like this was that
(18:50):
a lot of people started saying, well, youknow, we're sure this is fun, but this
is not art, you know, I mean, this isthe whole controversy about what is art.
And she was very adamant that all of thisis indeed art, it's just that this is art
that is available to anybody and doesn'thave to be for the elite, and I think
that this was just one of those thingsthat she dealt with her entire life.
Annie (19:12):
Right, she was probably just focused on sharing the stuff.
Going back to the children bit.
I have, when I went in Toulouse,it was actually funny because my
husband was having cataract surgeryat a clinic right by Les Abattoirs,
where they... No, no, it was LesAbattoirs, where they had the show.
(19:32):
And so I walked over there and whenI walked over there, I didn't have a
reservation, but there was a long line,including a big group of children that
some a couple of ladies who probablyrun a daycare center brought the kids.
And some of the people look like, oh whatare these young children going to do here?
Because they were all underfive, you know, well under five.
(19:55):
And they loved it.
They love it, but they couldn't touch.
You couldn't.
No, you couldn't touch at that exhibit.
But a lot of the stuff, herinstallations that are out in public,
you can touch and kids love it.
It's beautiful.
Elyse (20:08):
That's interesting too, to point that out, because of course,
inside a museum, it's a no no, right?
And that was one of the thingsshe wanted to get away from.
So she explicitly chose public spacesto do her larger pieces and wanted them
to be pieces that could be touched,climbed on, even go inside of, some of
(20:29):
them are actually very, very strange,these sort of huge, strange, monster
looking kinds of things, or big women.
Some of the pieces, this is fascinating.
So as part of the show notes, I wrotedown, I had gone online and made a
list of a lot of the most importantor well known pieces, she did in
the early 1960s, she was invited bysomebody, I have no idea who, to do
(20:55):
a public piece in Hanover, Germany.
And so what she did was she did anoutdoors piece of three of these
women, very... you know, they'rebig, they're round, they're very
colorful, they all kind of look likethey're almost dancing, you know.
Annie (21:09):
And they're shiny.
The color is very shiny and very bright.
I don't know how she made them.
The process of making themmust have been interesting.
Sorry, I interrupted.
Elyse (21:18):
No, no, no, but I'll talk, it's a good thing you mentioned that because
we'll talk about that in a second.
But what happened was, I don't knowwho gave her permission to do this, but
she set these up, she finished them.
But of course, by this time shewas, you know, she had her own big
studios where she could do her work.
They were all set up, there arelots of pictures of them, you
can find them almost anywhere.
And she called them Les Trois Nanas, whichof course is the word in French for, it's
(21:41):
an informal word for women, basically.
Annie (21:44):
Nana is, normally it's a good looking woman.
Elyse (21:46):
It's a good looking woman.
These three very voluptuous, youknow, very kind of.. And, so this is
the beginning of the 1960s, so... youknow... a group of people in Hanover
started a petition to get rid of them.
They said that this was, you know,not art, that it was scandalous.
And what happened was that it createdthis kind of debate in Hanover, Germany.
(22:10):
And in the end, there were morepeople who voted to keep the
sculptures than there were thatwanted to get rid of the sculptures.
Annie (22:16):
Oh, good.
Elyse (22:17):
And now the irony is that in the museum in Hanover, has one
of the largest collection of herwork of any place in the world.
Annie (22:24):
Very good.
Elyse (22:26):
It became the symbol of Hanover, the three nanas, you know.
And this was the beginning of herdoing these very, very big, very, very
flamboyant outdoor pieces, which of courseshe has done in a lot of different places.
Sometimes invited by a town, orsometimes she just asked for permission.
(22:47):
She would go and find a placethat was outside in public.
She did two pieces inJerusalem of all places.
One of them called The Golem.
And the Golem is a wordthat it means the monster.
Annie (22:58):
Okay.
Elyse (22:59):
She was invited to do a piece, this is also in the middle of the 1960s,
after she started to really become famous.
And apparently, at first theywanted her to do it on the
grounds of this very big museum.
And she said, no.
No, no, no, no, no, it has to be out in apublic space where everybody can go over,
can sit on it, can climb it, can touch it.
Annie (23:19):
That's really, I mean, a sign that she was really confident
about the quality of the materialand that it would stand up to time.
Elyse (23:29):
Yes.
So the problem is, and you reallysaid the magic word, asking
about what she did this with.
She worked with polymers.
Was talking about an artist who's becomepretty much famous, internationally
famous, starting in the 1960s.
Nobody knew too much about thetoxic effect of a lot of these
(23:49):
things that she was working with.
So she was working with sprays.
She was working with polymers.
And she was working with allkinds of materials that turned
out to be extremely toxic.
And so what happened to Niki de SaintPhalle is that by the time she was in her
late thirties, and she never smoked, ever.
(24:11):
By the time she was in her late thirties,she started to have respiratory problems
from the work that she was doing andthe materials that she was working with.
And even though I suppose that at somepoint she started wearing masks, she
never stopped using these materials.
And in the end she died in theyear 2001 at the age of 71.
(24:36):
But in the last 10 years of herlife she suffered enormously from
all kinds of horrible respiratorythings and lung problems because
of the materials that she had used.
The toxicity of the things she usedwas terrible, terrible, terrible.
And yet she continued.
She just refused to stop.
Annie (24:55):
Right, so she knew it wasn't good for her.
Elyse (24:58):
By this time.
By the time she was almost 40,she was already having problems.
She had huge emphysema.
She had all kinds of things.
In the end she died ofrespiratory failure.
And she suffered enormouslythe last few years of her life.
But I'm sure by that time she hadchanged some of the materials,
but it was basically too late.
(25:18):
It was just impossible for her torecuperate what she had lost in terms of
her lungs and the capacity to do that.
In the 1970s, she married her secondhusband, a sculptor, an artist named
Jean Tinguely, who was actuallySwiss, and who was famous for doing
what are called kinetic sculptures.
(25:39):
And the one that's the fountain thatis next to Pompidou Center is a joint
venture of the two of them becauseit's got her colorful sculptures
and his pieces that turn and spraywith the water and everything.
Annie (25:52):
Very nice.
Elyse (25:53):
And they did a lot of work together.
They collaborated a lot on pieces.
In the end, I don't think they, as acouple, they were together for about
10 years and then they were no longeractually a couple, but he became and
stayed her partner of choice for manyprojects through the rest of her life.
Anyway, they just stayed very, very close.
Annie (26:15):
Did she ever become rich?
Elyse (26:18):
She was rich.
Annie (26:19):
Well, okay, but...
And yes, and she became richin terms of her artwork.
And the way she did, and it was veryclever of her, actually, was that
in order to have the money to dothese monumental pieces, she made
a lot of small pieces that sold.
Elyse (26:37):
There are, you know, hundreds and hundreds of museums, ironically,
that have some of these smaller, verycolorful sculptures, but also, at
the same time she was doing all ofthis, she did a lot of work on paper.
And she did these very beautiful drawingsand we were just looking at some of the
pictures because we did both see thesame retrospective here in Toulouse.
(26:58):
Starting in the 1970s she becamevery politically active in terms of
using political, social issues in herwork, partly because she had several
friends who were dying of AIDS.
And partly because of various eventsthat were going on in the world.
So she spent time in the United States.
(27:19):
She would go back and forth.
She lived for years and years inParis, but she really would go back
and forth from one country to the next.
And she became very involved indealing with issues of racism,
dealing with problems with AIDSand the phobia of homosexuality.
And she took on all of thesesubjects in her drawings, not in the
(27:41):
big sculptural pieces, which werebasically neutral in that sense.
You know, they're colorful, they'rebig and all of that, but she was
very explicit in the paperwork.
And some of it is just verybeautiful of these gorgeous
little drawings, very colorful.
Everything's always filledwith color in her work.
But with text that is veryexplicit against racism, against
(28:03):
all kinds of prejudices, againstwar, against guns, ironically, of
course, after the initial thing.
Yeah, the tir right, you know.
These pieces are incollections everywhere.
And these, of course, sold fora huge amount of money because
they're originals, it's not printedout, you know, in multiple copies.
And they're gorgeous.
Annie (28:23):
And they have things to say.
And she drew on them.
She colored them.
I guess if she hadn't been so famous,nobody maybe would have paid attention
to these pieces, but she was very famousand had proved that she could do art.
Elyse (28:39):
Absolutely, she really could.
And her color is, it's because some ofthese pieces, especially the pieces that
are on paper, if you don't get up closeto read the text, it's just joyful.
It's just beautiful color and littlefigurines and things like that all over
the place and it's lovely to look at.
Annie (28:57):
I'll share photos of a lot of these things on social media, on
Facebook and on Instagram, I'm alsoon BlueSky and let's see, on Threads.
Huh?
I never talk about those, but I am.
Elyse (29:10):
Good for
Annie (29:10):
you.
You can see the photos on those.
Elyse (29:12):
Basically what happened was as she got older, she became more
ambitious in the size of her projects.
And so she took on these enormousmammoth, mammoth projects that
of course she had to finance.
Because a lot of themshe financed herself.
She wasn't given grant money,she wasn't given money by
cities or anything like that.
Annie (29:32):
I figured she had lots of cash anyway from being
rich, I mean, family money.
Elyse (29:37):
Yeah, except that it's not usual for an artist to self finance everything.
It really is not.
Yeah, really.
And of course, the biggest piece thatshe ever did, which was finished sadly
posthumously because she, when she diedin 2001, it was almost finished, but not
quite, is this piece that we were justtalking about called the Tarot Garden.
Annie (29:59):
Ah, yes.
I had never heard of thisand you told me all about it.
Fantastic.
I want to go see it now.
Elyse (30:04):
I can't wait to go.
I just actually can't, it's agood excuse to go to Italy anyway.
It's a huge, several hectares of land.
And she created sculptural figures thatare exaggerated, kind of monster like,
but incredibly colorful, with mosaic,and pieces of glass, and pieces of paint.
(30:24):
And they're unbelievable to look at.
And every one of them isone of the 22 tarot cards.
Annie (30:32):
Right.
So tarot cards are probably notsomething everybody's heard of.
They are kind of a, okay, so in France,you can play tarot, and it's just a game.
It's a bit of a complicatedcard game that requires special
cards because you play in suits.
But it's also somethingthat's used for divination.
(30:53):
And I've played tarot a lot, in my youth.
I don't even remember the rulesanymore because it's been so long,
but it's a very common kind of deckof cards that you take to school,
and at during lunch break, you wouldplay tarot or belotte, whichever one.
belotte is played with a regulardeck of cards, but Tarot, you
need a special deck of cards.
Elyse (31:15):
I think in the States, tarot is known for the
divination, for fortune telling.
Annie (31:20):
Yeah, I've never met an American who played the game tarot.
But in France you do.
Elyse (31:24):
But I remember when I was much younger, I had somebody read my
cards, you know, and that was like...
Annie (31:29):
Ha ha ha.
I see death!
Elyse (31:32):
Exactly.
You don't want to have certaincards come up, you know?
I was like... It's veryfascinating, you know.
In 1994, she wrote her memoir, and thatis when she talks for the very first
time publicly about what happenedto her when she was a child at home.
She talks about the treatmentof her by her mother, she talks
about the abuse by her father.
(31:55):
And it's very interesting becausethe two children she had were
brought up by her ex husband.
She obviously saw them asadults later on in her life.
And you think that she was 20, 21 whenshe had these children, but she basically
lived her life away from the children.
Annie (32:11):
Might have been a good thing, actually, if she was a bit crazy, and from
that kind of background... Yeah, maybethat was a better thing for the kids.
Elyse (32:19):
Probably, I mean, I went online, she now has their adult
grandchildren, so they survived allof this without too much trouble.
My guess is, I would assume, I havereally no idea, that as she got older,
she was able to be with them, but theywere already adults, you know, I mean, by
that time, so it was a whole other story.
She really, by the time we get into the1980s, she is really world famous and
(32:44):
she has public work all over Europe.
She has public work in the UnitedStates, many pieces, many, many pieces
in California, she also has a lot ofpublic work of all places in Japan.
Annie (32:57):
Wow.
Elyse (32:58):
Which is very interesting.
Very interesting to see wheresome of her work has gone.
And so, in the 1990s, when she was inentering, basically the end of her 60
something, I mean, because she died whenshe was just 71, but she was really sick.
The lung problems, the respiratoryproblems really meant that she
was in and out of hospital alot, but she kept on working.
(33:22):
And I was reading something yesterdaywhere it said that in the last six
months of her life, she spent almostall the time in the hospital, but she
was already preparing new projects.
She didn't stop.
She never stopped.
She wanted to create and she wanted, thiswas what she wanted to leave to the world
was these major outdoor public pieces.
(33:43):
And a couple of them were of course,like the last one that she did in
the States, which was in Escondido,which is where she had lived, we're
finished in the year after her death.
In France, she had the hugeretrospective in 2014, which I had
the chance of actually going to see.
I did know about her work already.
I don't remember why or where, Ihave no idea, but I knew about her
(34:08):
work before I went to see the show.
But when you go to see the show, like theone that we had here, the one in Paris,
it had pretty much the same things ashere, but some of the huge pieces that
they couldn't carry and bring to a placelike Toulouse, the huge monumental pieces.
But she has big piecesjust about everywhere.
(34:28):
And there were three museumsthat have a lot of her work.
One of them is in Nice.
Annie (34:33):
Oh, which one?
Elyse (34:35):
A Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Annie (34:37):
Oh, and I've been to that.
I don't remember it, but Okay.
Okay.
Elyse (34:41):
She donated 170 works to the museum the year she died, as part of her legacy.
I assume that a lot of thepieces are on paper and smaller
pieces, but they're there.
Annie (34:52):
That might be why I don't remember them.
Elyse (34:54):
I think she has just two or three big outdoor pieces, maybe in
the gardens surrounding the museum.
Annie (35:00):
Yeah, because when you see her big pieces, they're hard to miss.
Elyse (35:03):
Absolutely, they're hard to miss, yeah.
She created a museum using her ownmoney in the Freiburg, Switzerland,
which is where her Jean Tinguely,her second husband was from.
And he died very suddenly in 1991,and they were at the process of
working on a project together thatthey had, you know, they'd been
working together for almost 30 years.
(35:25):
And so she decided that she was goingto make sure that there was a museum
that would have his work, and it is nowcalled the Niki de Saint Phalle - Jean
Tinguely Museum in Freiburg, Switzerland.
And it has many pieces by both of them.
And then the largest collection ofher work is in the Sprengel Museum in
(35:45):
Hanover, Germany, the city that at firstdid not want her work, yeah, and is now
very, very proud of the fact that theyown the biggest collection of her work.
Annie (35:56):
And you list a few more Sun God in San Diego.
Elyse (36:00):
Yes.
Annie (36:01):
The Moon in Bria Mall in California.
Elyse (36:04):
The Great Amorous Bird in Switzerland, in Nendrisco, I have no
idea where that is in Switzerland.
She did a lot of birds,interestingly enough.
Annie (36:12):
And some of her smaller sculptures have birds and snakes.
And the birds and snakes arealways very colorful and very,
they're not frightening to me.
And the women, and the very large women,you know, I'm like, Hey, I like these
ladies, they look like they're dancing.
They have their arms up andthey look like they're dancing,
(36:33):
celebrating, having a good time.
They're not frightening in any way.
Elyse (36:38):
No, and I think especially with the women, because she has women that
are upright dancing, she has women thatare lying down, she has women in all
kinds of very strange positions, but theyseem to be celebrating what a woman is.
There's just something about them,the roundness of them, the movement
of them, that they're very colorful,they're very joyful and all of that.
(36:59):
There's a big, apparently there'sa huge collection of her pieces
in a museum in Stockholm as well.
And Stockholm was one of the firstcities to ask her to come and do some
pieces for them, even before Hanover did.
So it's very interesting to see whereshe was invited to go and then where
she basically said, Oh, can I come here?
(37:20):
You know, can I get like the Tarot Garden?
She chose the place.
Annie (37:23):
She must have been a really interesting person to talk to.
So what, how did she do this?
She picked up the phone and called thecity and said I want to talk to the
mayor and I want to put a statue, youknow, a massive statue here or something?
I don't know.
Elyse (37:37):
I mean, certanly by the 1980s she was famous enough that I think
she could do something like that.
But then, of course, they wouldhave to offer her a public space.
But if I remember correctly, andI may not remember this exactly
correctly, she knew some, there's anItalian architect named Mario Boto,
who was a very good friend of hers.
(37:58):
They worked together on some things.
He's very famous as acontemporary architect.
And apparently, he told herabout this piece of land.
I don't know if it was a piece of landthat he knew about that, or he had, he was
from this area, but he's the one that gaveher the idea of going to this particular
place and doing this huge Tarot Garden.
(38:18):
And so he helped, I think he helpednegotiate to get the land for her.
You know, so that she could do it.
And it's very interesting becauseit says that she explicitly
said it has to be free.
So when she died, not all 22 pieceswere finished, almost all of them,
but not the last couple were finished,but they were finished by, you know,
(38:39):
with her instructions afterwards.
And it's run by the Niki deSaint Phalle Foundation, which
means it drains money because youdon't pay to go and visit this.
She wanted to make sure it was free,but it is only open half a year because
they have to do a lot of upkeep on thepieces because they're made of millions
(39:00):
of pieces of glass and mosaic and ceramic.
And when you look at thesepieces, you can't even imagine the
work that went into doing them.
Annie (39:08):
Well, and outside, I mean, they get a beating, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, just imagine, like lookingaround my house, I built a wooden
fence a few years back and itlooks like it needs to be redone.
Because it's just sitting outside all day.
So anything you do outside isgoing to need some maintenance.
(39:29):
Yeah.
Elyse (39:30):
Absolutely.
And these pieces, especially the TarotGarden, I'm not sure some of the others
too, I think towards the end, these areconcrete on an armature, on a metallic
frame, covered with mosaics, so theweight of them, can you imagine what
that is, you know, between the glass,the ceramic, the cement, everything
else, these are huge pieces that take alot of technical know how to get done.
Annie (39:53):
Right, so you have to have the know how of a contractor, of a builder,
of a sculptor, but then the artsybit, which is very, very important.
I wonder if people think that her art wasa bit, it's so friendly and joyful, and
because she was a, I mean, she had herdemons, I'm sure she was a dark person.
(40:15):
She had some dark timesin her youth, especially.
So is it too light?
Is it too, you know, like...
Elyse (40:23):
That's the, it's so, that is actually interesting because
that's, I added that just as a littlebit of a thing at the very end.
I actually know people in the artworld, I won't mention who, because
it doesn't matter to anybody outthere anyway, who dismiss her work,
on the grounds that she's it's toouser friendly, it's too approachable,
it's too colorful, it's too simple.
(40:44):
I, with all of my background and mytraining, I can't stand that attitude, I
really can't, because I think that justbecause work is accessible, just because
work is colorful, just because work doesnot have to be, is not obscure and dark.
I mean, there are things that can beobscure and dark can be interesting
(41:05):
for other reasons, but I, I thinkthat it's a total snobbery to say
that this is not worth lookingat because it is not like that.
Annie (41:15):
Well, the guys who were hanging bicycles and toilets up on walls were
about the same time frame, right?
Elyse (41:21):
No, they were earlier.
They were a lot earlier.
The 20th century was a century basicallyof enormous upheaval and provocation,
and doing things to basically...At first, it was just to shock.
She even said, you know, she saidat first when she started doing
all this stuff, even the shootingwith the gun, it was to shock.
It was to provoke.
(41:42):
It was to see how people would react.
But she didn't hurt anybody,or do anything like that.
It was just that like, oh, this is really,you know, some people will say it's
stupid, some people would say it's silly.
But then she started really refiningher ideas of why she wanted to do art.
And that is when it reallygets to be interesting.
And honestly, having seen theretrospective in the Grand Palais and
(42:03):
then the one we saw just a couple ofyears ago here in Toulouse, when you see
the variety of form, the variety of stylein terms of whether it's paper, whether
it's small pieces, whether it's biggerpieces, whether some of it is very serious
and talks about very serious issues.
One of the things that you take away fromall of this is that she was able to do
(42:24):
this and still maintain the exuberanceof the color and everything else.
I just think it's wonderful.
Annie (42:31):
I think it's beautiful stuff.
You know, I'm a simple person,and I love that children look
at this and it makes them smile.
It makes them happy to see it.
Even very young children, like youcan't explain to very young children
the concept behind a piece, they justhave to like it or not, you know?
Elyse (42:51):
Exactly.
Annie (42:51):
And there's a lot to like in what she made.
And I think she made the worlda better place, even though
she had a pretty rough start.
So, yay for Niki de Saint Phalle.
Elyse (43:02):
Yeah.
Yay for Niki de Saint Phalle.
Yes, indeed.
Annie (43:06):
And we need more like that.
Because, I think if you take awalk in a park, or in a city, and
there's a plaza or something withsome beautiful piece, beautiful
colorful piece, it makes life better.
It just does.
I don't know why it does, but it does.
Elyse (43:21):
It does, you know?
If you look at some of the pictures,some of the pieces that are out there,
she did these monsters where the tongueturns into a slide that the kids can
crawl up on, the ears are sticking out.
I mean, if you take a look at itcarefully, it's really monsters,
you know, I mean, they really are.
Yet, the combination of the colors,the materials that are used, and
(43:42):
the fact that you can go on it andtouch it, she said, by making them
touchable, and you can crawl on it, itmakes the fear of whatever it is that
you have fear of, you know, go away.
I mean, that's basically the bottom line.
So you're right.
I think that a lot of this work thatis really so colorful and interesting
came out of some very dark places, butboy, she produced enormous amounts of
(44:07):
work in the, basically the 50 yearsthat she was able to be an artist.
Annie (44:11):
She conquered.
Elyse (44:12):
She conquered.
Annie (44:13):
Thank you so much, Elyse.
That was very interesting.
Elyse (44:16):
Thank you, Annie.
It was fun.
Annie (44:17):
Merci beaucoup.
Au revoir.
Again, I want to thank my patrons forgiving back and supporting the show.
Patreon supporters get new episodesas soon as they are ready and ad-free.
If that sounds good to you, be likethem, follow the link in the show notes.
(44:39):
And of course, patrons getmany more exclusive rewards for
supporting this show, you cansee them at patreon.com/joinu s.
And I have just one new Join Us in FranceChampion to thank this week, Catherine
who didn't share her last name, but joinedat the yearly Groupie du Podcast patron.
(45:02):
Thank you, Catherine.
And to all my current patrons, it iswonderful to have you on board in the
community of travel enthusiasts andfrancophiles who keep this podcast going.
And it's going to be even more importantgoing forward because France is in a bit
of a pickle when it comes to a budgetand the debt, and they are putting in
(45:24):
new rules to try and collect more taxes.
And unfortunately, people likeme who run very small businesses
are getting hit pretty hard.
I hope they change the rules quicklybecause it just passed yesterday.
So this is all brand new.
We will see if we have enough of alobby to get this change, but right now
they're going to really hit us hard, soyour support is much, much appreciated.
(45:47):
And to support Elyse goto patreon.com/Elysart.
This week I published a list ofmy favorite restaurants around
Notre Dame de Paris, with photosand an explanation of why.
And it's not so much what I share,but the fact that I'm available to
patrons who want to chit chat withme or who want to ask me questions.
(46:09):
My updated Île de laCité tour is now live.
It was pretty good before, and nowit's even better, because who doesn't
want to be guided through the storiestold by the doorways of Notre Dame?
People pass through there without,you know, they look and they think,
Oh, it's pretty, but they have noidea what... what the stories are.
I can tell you what the stories are.
I hope you enjoy it.
(46:30):
And if you bought it in the past, youcan delete the old version of that
VoiceMap tour and get the new one.
It's free for peoplewho've already bought it.
And of course, podcast listeners get abig discount for buying these tours from
my website (46:44):
join usinfrance.com/boutique to do that, anything you want to
buy from me, it's at the boutique.
If you're thinking about a tripto France and have a hard time
deciding what to do, I can help youmaking some important decisions, I
do one on one consultations on Zoom.
There are two levels of support,and you can also see about that
(47:05):
at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Okay, let's talk about theiconic symbols of Paris.
If you remember the Olympics, itwasn't that long ago, the Paris
2024 Olympics, they had iconicsymbols that they were displaying.
And those, some of those mightfind a new home in La Chapelle
(47:26):
District of the 18th Arrondissement.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo hassuggested relocating the statues
of the 10 notable French women.
They were prominently featured in theopening ceremony to Rue de la Chapelle.
The idea is to create a lasting tribute toa historically working class and immigrant
(47:48):
neighborhood, an area that has seen alot of transformation in recent years.
This is definitely not a touristy partof Paris, but they want to gentrify
it, is really what's happening.
And so far it's worked.
The Olympics have done a lot of goodin that part of the North of Paris.
And so hopefully it will continue.
(48:09):
The statues themselves representkey figures in French history.
Women who have made an impact in science,politics, literature, and social progress.
So placing them in a public spacewhere people walk by all the time
could be a great way to keep theirstories alive beyond the games.
Now, what about the Olympicrings and the Olympic cauldron?
(48:31):
That's a bit less certain.
The rings were displayedon the Eiffel tower.
They've been a big conversation piece.
What's going to happenwith them we don't know.
We don't know very much.
We don't even know if they'llbe in Paris permanently or not.
As for the cauldron, it was litin the Tuileries Gardens, instead
of a traditional stadium setting.
(48:52):
There's still debate overwhere it should end up.
Some people think it should remain in apublic space, as a reminder of the games,
but no firm plans have been announced.
So while the statues are almostcertainly heading to La Chapelle,
the fate of the other major Olympicsymbols is still up in the air.
Okay, for those of you who would like torent a car in Paris so you can go explore
(49:16):
the Loire Valley or anywhere outsideof Paris, here's what you need to know.
You've heard me say that driving in Parisis a terrible idea and very stressful,
even if you're used to driving inlarge cities, because in Paris, they
have different rules than in the restof France, or the rest of the world.
They are unique.
(49:36):
Their own thing.
So if you're used to driving, likein France, Canada, the US, Germany,
by that, I mean, the left hand sidesteering wheel, then you yield to traffic
coming from your left in a roundabout.
In Paris, you yield totraffic coming from the right.
And that makes the mess you canwitness around the Arc de Triomphe.
(49:58):
But that's hardly the only mess in Paris.
I was near the Les Invalides, there'sa roundabout in front of the Invalides,
same thing, right hand side priority.
People don't understand how these works.
French people who didn't learnhow to drive in Paris anymore,
don't know how to do those either.
So it's a mess.
I learned how to drive in Toulouse,and I taught driving in Toulouse as
(50:21):
well, years and years ago, back whenwe still had a few of those right
hand side priorities, in all ofFrance, we still had some in Toulouse.
They've all been converted to regularroundabouts with yielding to the left.
In Paris, they're not makingthat change, yet, perhaps never,
(50:41):
and so it's very different.
So if you have a young driver wholearned how to drive in Toulouse, driving
to Paris, they don't get it either.
So it's... it's a big mess.
Most places in the world, whenyou enter a freeway or a belt
route, you yield to traffic that'salready on the freeway, right?
In Paris, the people enteringthe freeway have priority, which
(51:05):
is why they act like jerks.
So don't drive in Paris and in the innerbelt of Paris, if you look at a, if you
zoom out on a map of Paris on Google, youcan see Paris has two belt routes, really,
the inner one, you don't want to be there.
You just don't want to be there.
I used to say, rent your careither at CDG, that's the airport,
(51:27):
Charles de Gaulle airport, orone of the portes, west of Paris.
Porte Maillot was often recommended.
Well, there's an evensimpler solution now.
Take Metro line 14 to the airport.
Now you'll need to pay the 13 Eurospecial airport Metro ticket to do that.
And then set your GPS to Normandy,the Loire Valley, or Strasbourg, or
(51:50):
Toulouse, or even if you're going Northof Paris, say you're going to Lille,
which is due North, your GPS should nottake you through Paris central at all.
Orly airport is South of Paris andit's surrounded by freeways that
can take you in any direction, andGPSs are usually smart enough to
(52:11):
keep you away from city centers.
So if I'm ever in a situation whereI need to rent a car in Paris, that's
what I'll do, rent from Orly airport.
You can get to it fast and safe.
You know, I have a problem with the RERto Charles de Gaulle Airport, because
they haven't put in real securitythat stops thieves from grabbing
(52:32):
bags out of the hands of unsuspectingvisitors who've just arrived.
And I don't feel comfortablerecommending that you take that.
Now, if you listen to thepodcast, you've heard about this.
What happens is the RER betweenCDG and Paris, there are some
that don't make any stops.
There are some that do make stops.
If it makes a stop somewhere thedoors will open, some thief, or
(52:56):
usually it's two of them, thieveswill rush in, grab bags, rush out.
The door's closed.
The RER moves on andyou've lost your luggage.
Okay?
This happens every day, dozensof times, and there's not
enough security to stop it.
So, that's why I recommend thatif you're going to take the RER
(53:17):
between CDG and Paris, you only takethe direct RER because then that
problem is not likely to happen.
I have to say also that the Metrois a bit more reliable than the
RER generally speaking, it's abrand new Metro, a very old RER,
you know, yeah, it's more reliable.
So personally I'd go to Orlyairport to pick up my rental car.
(53:40):
My thanks to podcast editors,Anne and Christian Cotovan,
who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the podcast, an episodewith Hannah Compton called Baby Moon in
Paris, and yes, it's about having a tripto Paris while pregnant, very pregnant,
and have a great time all the same.
And remember, patrons get an ad-freeversion of this episode, click on the
(54:02):
link in the show notes to be like them.
Thank you so much for listening.
And I hope you join me next time sowe can look around France together.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
(54:26):
no derivatives license.
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