Niki de Saint Phale
She made destructive work, cathartic work. Her recognisable figures of the hilly female body remind me of Matisse. The explosions and the guns make me think of Jean Tinguely. For good reason, as it turns out that the two are married. I looked at Tinguely’s “Homage to New York” (1960) for a previous piece of work that I was hoping to make but that didnt work itself out and ended up totally disperate from my original idea. I like the physical/kentic aspects of the work. But after the shooting has finished and the paint has dried the painting is dead. Not in the same way that Phale screams while shooting. She, I think, is crying out that the method of production has changed and needs not to be constrained to paintings of the past, “Tradional painting is dead”. Instead the paintings, in my opinion, are reminders of how lifeless representation is in comparison to participation in life.
