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Niki de Saint Phalle's Park Avenue Park

By Peggy Roalf   Wednesday July 11, 2012

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This week the Park Avenue median between 52nd and 60th Streets becomes a summer playground for nine super-scaled polyester resin/ceramic sculptures by the French/American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002). The best of these, Serpent Tree, from 1999, is a raucous, colorful take on the mythological representation of women commandeering serpents to vanquish enemies or to recall Minoan fertility goddesses who tamed serpents to guard against tomb robbers.

Saint Phalle said that this twelve-headed creature, whose golden heads writhe above a swirling trunk in the artist’s signature mosaic surface, was inspired by Antonio Gaudi’s Parc Güell garden in Barcelona. The self-taught artist launched her career in the 1960s at a time when women in the arts were few and far between. Her early assemblages, called Tir or “shooting” paintings, aggressively engaged viewers to fire at the works with .22 caliber rifles; when bullets pierced hidden bags of paint, the neutral surfaces took on brilliant color, which became the signature of her large-scale sculptures. Over her long career, Saint Phalle was commissioned to a number of sculpture parks, including Queen Califa's Magic Circle in Escondido, California.

The installation was sponsored by Nohra Haime Gallery and the Niki Charitable Art Foundation under the auspices of the Sculpture Committee of the Fund for Park Avenue and the New York City Parks & Recreation's Public Art Program and will remain through mid-November.

There will be an opening reception at Nohra Haime Gallery from 6 to 8 pm on Thursday, July 12, in celebration of the installation on the 10th anniversary of the artist’s death. 41 East 57th Street, NY, NY. Photo: Peggy Roalf.


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