Home ›› 26 Feb 2023 ›› Opinion
A certain creative spark and ingenious spirit of the artist does not depend on the identity of the individual. Regardless of who finds place in the history books or on the museum walls, artists are driven by a passion to create, challenging the norms of their times and the barriers that may stand in their way.
Women artists especially have persevered in putting their mark on the movements of art-be it impressionism or modernism, conceptual or performance art. Berthe Morisot, counting Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas as peers, earned her place among the Parisian avant-garde of the late 19th-century, a near anomaly at the time. The abstract works of Hilma af Klint we now know indeed predate the male masters of abstraction previously recognized. These trailblazers paved the way for the next and subsequent generations of artists and creators
The French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) made a name for herself in the early 1960s. Her vibrant, vivacious and voluptuous Nana sculptures radically celebrate the female form. She was a feminist who embraced fantasy, her multi-disciplinary work full of colour and energy. And she had bold ideas about the future, saying, “Women could administrate this world much better.” She believed they could usher in “a new world of joy.”
She also was not afraid of working outside the system, collaborating on commercially successful and mass-reaching projects to help fund her personal practice. This model was far ahead of its time, challenging the accepted relationship of patron, gallery, and artist. One such endeavour was an eponymous fragrance. While in development in the early eighties, La Prairie’s creative team shared a design studio with the artist in New York, an encounter that led to La Prairie’s embrace of one of Saint Phalle’s favourite colours: cobalt blue. It would become the signature hue of the Skin Caviar Collection, one that embodied a joyful, modern spirit that remains iconic decades later.
The reverence for her work has continued, with La Prairie supporting “Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life” at MoMA PS1 in 2021. The major retrospective of over 200 works exploring the artist’s multi-disciplinary practice and exploration of social and political issues not only ensured the artist’s legacy lives on, it offered visitors a chance to revisit, reconnect, and discover her ground-breaking work.
La Prairie
