London is a a City of Art and our Walks include numerous wonderful places where works of art can be seen. Indeed, we have been known to refer to our London walks as Walks of Art!
Last night, before we were called away to do a little bit of scary art of our own on the London Ghost Walks, we started telling you a little bit about a painting by Nikki de Saint Phalle, which can be seen in the Energy and Process wing of Tate Modern.
We explained how, at first, the picture, one of her Shooting Paintings, seems like a series of coloured streaks running down a plaster.
But we ended by telling you how Nikki de Saint Phalle actually made chance itself the main creator of the painting. Here’s how.
She would begin with a wooden base board which she would lay down flat on a surface. This done she would fill plastic bags with different colours of liquid paint.
Having done this she would then cover everything with plaster so that she had a pristine white, rough mound of plaster piled against the background of the board.
She would wait for it to dry and then would be ready to “create” the painting.
The board would be raised upright and Nikki would then take a .22 rifle and shoot at the plaster.
The bullets would penetrate the plaster and would then rupture the plastic bags beneath causing the paint to run down the surface of the plaster in streaks of colour that mixed, mingled and pooled together.
Thus the element of chance effectively became the means by which the painting was created.
It was a revolutionary way to create a painting since it brought a new realism into art and, as a result, Nikki de Saint Phalle became famous and travelled all over the world to stage her Shooting Paintings.
The one you’re looking at in Energy and Process was created on the stage of the American Embassy in Paris on the evening of June 20th 1961.
Two American artists, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, fired the bullets at the plaster and created what you see before you. So this could be said to be a collaboration between de Saint Phalle and these two other artists.
Shortly after this was created Nikki de Saint Phalle was introduced by Marcel Duchamp to Salvador Dali, both of whose works we will cover in a later post.
However, Nikki de Saint Phalle stopped creating her Shooting Pictures in 1963 saying that she had become addicted to shooting “like one becomes addicted to a drug.”
We will continue our tour of the art inside Tate Modern later today with a look at the central hub of Energy and Process as we look at Arte Povera itself.
You can, if you wish,take a look at our various London walks or tonight you can join us on one of our Old City of London Ghost Walks.
