Screen Test [ST292]: Niki de Saint Phalle

The late French American artist Niki de Saint Phalle is remembered today for her Nanas, a highly spirited force of colorful female sculptures. These figures, as with all of Niki’s works, possess an unbridled creativity that hums with the very energy of life. Through unpublished stills and recent footage shot in Europe, America, and Japan, this documentary recalls the life and legacy of the multidisciplinary artist, whose portraits and artworks japanese director Michiko Matsumoto photographed from 1981. It introduces in intimate detail such masterworks as the Tarot Garden in Tuscany, Italy, a vast collection of large-scale works more than 20 years in the making.

Filmic portrait of Niki de Saint Phalle's HON, a temporary indoor sculpture installation for the Moderna Museet of Stockholm.

The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film at 24 frames per second. The resulting two-and-a-half-minute film reels were then screened in 'slow motion' at 16 frames per second.

One hundred years ago, Dadaism challenged ideological, aesthetic and political conventions. Like David Bowie or Terry Gilliam, many artists have been influenced or fascinated by this anti-conformist movement.

Daddy, filmed in cooperation with movie director Peter Whitehead, discovers the connection between a father and little girl. Like the majority of Niki De Saint Phalle’s films, the flick combines autobiography with imagination, mixing erotic scenes of incest with a reverse of energy as the female character humors the daddy figure. Saint Phalle narrates the film, offering an almost psycho-analytical explanation of its content and explains the different inexplicable.

Rainer von Hessen and Niki de Saint Phalle met after he saw a photo of HON, the 1966 installation for Moderna Museet Stockholm, in a German magazine. Their collaboration began when Saint Phalle first designed the costumes and sets to Aristhophanes’s LYSISTRATA, directed by Hessen (then known under the stage name Diez). Thereafter, Hessen co-authored and directed her play ICH, which was performed at the Staatstheater Kassel in 1968.