Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002)

Even though she said it would never be done in her lifetime, Niki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden opened to the public in 1998, the same year a visitor center designed by architect Mario Botta was completed and four years before the French-American artist would die. This year marks its inclusion in my book "100 Years, 100 Landscape Designs," between Robert Irwin's Central Garden from 1997 and the Botanical Garden of Barcelona from 1999. To learn more about the famous park, I picked up this book — a companion to a 1997 exhibition in Italy — after coming across it at a used bookstore. It has plenty of photographs, sketches by Nike de Saint Phalle, essays by artists, critics, and Mario Botta, as well as interviews with people who worked on the realization of the huge, accessible sculptures. The last were particularly valuable, since they detailed just how the artist's distinctive figures were realized at such a scale, in a garden, and for perpetuity. It's one of the places in "100 Years, 100 Landscape Designs" that I've yet to see in person, though thumbing through this book again renews my interest in doing so someday soon.… (más)

From Amazon :This gorgeous volume offers the most complete overview in print of the oeuvre of Niki de Saint Phalle, one of the most influential and popular artists of the postwar period. The French-American artist was educated according to the social codes of upper-class New York society, but boldly rejected the expectations of her family to instead choose a career in art. Moving to Paris in the 1960s, she befriended the Nouveau Realiste artists Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri and Jean Tinguely, creating her famous "Shooting Paintings," the "Nanas" (brightly chromatic biomorphic sculptures of female archetypes), as well as experimental films, decors and costumes for ballet productions and collaborations with Tinguely, Robert Rauschenberg and others. Saint Phalle was adept at using the media to consolidate her public image, and soon became an icon of the 1960s art scene, attaining a broad cultural profile that was furthered by her numerous public art projects, including the Tarot Garden in Tuscany and the Stravinsky Fountain in Paris. This superbly produced publication-which features a die-cut cover through which Saint Phalle peers, aiming her gun-presents her works in all media, along with ephemera and archival photographs documenting her rich career and life.Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) was born near Paris and moved to the US in 1933. During her teen years Saint Phalle was a fashion model and appeared on the cover of "Life" in 1949 and, three years later, on the cover of "French Vogue." At 18 Saint Phalle eloped with author Harry Mathews and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later to Paris, where she exhibited at the Alexander Iolas Gallery. In 1971 Saint Phalle married Jean Tinguely, and throughout that decade created the public sculptures and parks for which she became celebrated. Saint Phalle died of emphysema in California in May 2002.… (más)

I thought this book was so cool. This book is full of information but the way it is written is engaging for anyone who opens to any page of the book. The topic of this book is about AIDS, and how the virus is spread. Each page it either talks about how someone can get or how they can't. Not only are there text telling the reading this information, there is a picture for every single idea they talk about. For instance, there is a page on how you cannot get it. On this page there are a list of nouns that you cannot catch AIDS from and for each noun there is an illustration. Also I think this book is centered towards Kindergarten through second grade because the text is not very hard. I also put it for third through fourth graders because the text is written in cursive and I am not sure that K-2 can read that, but I am sure that grades 3-4 could be able to. The book can be a little inappropriate because it it does cover how AIDS can be transmitted sexually, but this is a fact. The main idea of this non fiction book was to share how the virus of AIDS can and cannot be spread. The author wants to reader to be informed about the virus and how to be careful and avoid the virus.… (más)