"Happy joyous domineering women"
Thoughts on motherhood and Niki de Saint Phalle
I messed up. At first I thought I really had my eye on the ball. During breakfast I told my daughter that we had to get her signed up for the next swim meet. But I’d actually missed the relevant email, lost it in my inbox, and the deadline had already passed. She cried into her French toast. Thirteen-year-old girls are emotional, at least in my experience. Tears have always come quickly for me, too, and therefore I also cried. I felt bad.
I told my friend over lunch about my mistake and she understood. She said knowingly, “as mother’s we feel so guilty all the time.” I sort of agree, but also, I don’t. Feel guilty all the time, that is.
The mistake happened because I was distracted and ignoring an over-full email inbox during my first week publishing here at Wanderlife. Creative projects - the deep focus, the creative juices squirting at all hours, the pushing oneself to birth whole new things - are, much of the time, glorious personal journeys that allow (require?) outside noises and distractions to fade. I just wasn’t really thinking about my family responsibilities much last week. I mean, we still had food in the fridge and all that.
Lucky for me, my daughter understands we are human, we are all of us creative beings, and these things happen. She knows I get like this sometimes, and since she reads Wanderlife, she knows what I’ve been up to. Of course I’m sorry I got in the way of her love for swimming, but I’m not sorry she has a mother who at times prioritizes her own art projects.
So who is Niki de Saint Phalle?
If you have been to the Pompidou Center in Paris, you might remember a fountain in front with moving parts that spray water, as well as brightly colored, pillowy sculptures that look like they might have been made by a child out of papier-mâché. This whimsical public artwork is the Stravinsky Fountain, a collaborative piece made in 1983 by Niki de Saint Phalle and her partner of more than 30 years, Jean Tinguely. It is possibly her most recognizable piece, but actually her art is all over the place!
There are several of her large sculptures along the Leine River way in Hannover and I passed them often during the year I lived there as a teenager, usually when I was browsing the weekly flea market. I liked them fine, but they were not exactly my taste.
Fifteen years later, when I was pregnant with my second daughter, a friend took me and the now-thirteen-year-old to experience Queen Califia’s Magical Circle in Escondido, California. I remember that afternoon well, all of us playing among the colorful tile-covered shapes, letting my toddler climb and romp, feeling all lit up by the fun of exploring an artscape with a young, curious child. But I hadn’t exactly remembered that that was Niki de Saint Phalle. Blame the brain wash that was that early stage of parenting or just, more simply, that I haven't until now given Niki de Saint Phalle her due consideration. I hadn’t yet connected the dots properly to see her relevance in my own life.
I was reminded of de Saint Phalle while visiting the Tinguely Museum in Basil in March last year and then learned there is a new (auto)biography, called “What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined,” by Nicole Rudick. The book is called an (auto)biography because Rudick has chosen to curate de Saint Phalle’s own words and images about herself. As the assembler of these artifacts, she adds only a bit of context at the beginning and end.
Lucky me, I cracked this book open the day of the breakfast tears. It was not just soothing but also uplifting. I found myself scribbling quotes into my notebook and thinking more about that conversation at lunch: Do mothers really need to feel guilty all the time?
Guess how de Saint Phalle describes her signature sculptures, the bright, billowing figures? She called them “happy joyous domineering women.”
Isn’t that great!? So it turns out Niki de Saint Phalle was an extremely prolific bad-ass artist in lots of mediums! Born in France in 1930, de Saint Phalle grew up in the United States but moved back to Europe as a young mother. Probably best known in the art world of the 1960s for shooting her artworks with a literal gun, she later started making the huge, wacky-shaped public sculptures she called nanas, but she also made art books, she wrote memoirs, she created interactive built spaces, and she worked among a large cast of men whose names and art fill most modern art museums around the world today.
Getting myself better acquainted with de Saint Phalle just hours after I messed up my mom responsibilities with regard to swim-meet registration, I was particularly struck by a quote from her daughter after her mother had died: “It was quite dramatic to have her leave at such an early time, but throughout the years I came to understand, share and enjoy her need for creative power and freedom. She was a terrific mother.”
I just love that!
Why not light up our brains so that our children can play along beside us?
(👇 Keep scrolling to see a couple photos of the three nanas by Niki de Saint Phalle in Hannover along the Leine River 👇)
All photos by Abby Hanson, 2001
Queen Califia’s Magical Circle in Escondido, California
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“Man, woman, old, child, aren’t we all that at once? You can make yourself very unhappy by cutting yourself off from your possibilities.” - Niki de Saint Phalle
“I want to go even deeper into the poetry of it, to try to express myself deep down. And by expressing myself with all my possibilities, I’m automatically expressing the situation of women today.” - Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle is worth looking into in whatever way suits you. An article from the NYTimes focuses on her as part of a famous art couple and the post-humous exhibition called Niki and Jean: Art and Love that opened in Basel a few years after her death. Here’s a link to her art foundation website and I also recommend Rudick’s new book.
Are there artists you admire? Is there artwork you love? What role does art play in your life?
PS: I would love to send you a postcard from California! Wanderlife is a creative endeavor to light up your brain and liberate your spirit, and mine! One thing that I’m most excited about is sending real-life, snail mail postcards to my paid subscribers!!! The world is our oyster! Consider becoming paid subscriber if it sounds like fun to get some pearls delivered to your front porch. No pressure, just wanted to mention it. Thanks for reading!
Love it! It's refreshing to hear about people making mistakes -- and being forgiven.
Funny, I appraised a work by Niki de Saint Phalle just yesterday and went down a rabbit hole about her work, and today you post this! I’ll pick up the book. Btw, I feel mom guilt all the time about everything. It’s counterproductive yet hard to shake. Just remember, you’re doing great!!