The Grand Palais brings Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely dialogue

Paris. How to stage two artists-Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) and Jean Tinguely (1925-1991)-, this couple having carried out works with four hands while pursuing radically different steps? And how to introduce Pontus Hulten (1924-2006), the visionary at the origin of the Center Pompidou?

From the entrance, the visitor is invited to rediscover Pontus Hulten through numerous documents – texts, photographs, videos – which recall his major role in the history of contemporary art.

The collaborative works of Saint Phalle and Tinguely then take place, with in particular The Zig and Puce Crocrodromea dragon installed in the forum when the MNAM was opened in 1977. But it was at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, that the couple’s most provocative realization was designed in 1966. Total art work, Hon – in Katedralwas an immense elongated girl, legs apart, in which the public was invited to penetrate through the vagina. Programmed to be destroyed, it echoes the famous Tribute to New YorkCreated by Tinguely at MoMA in 1960: a heterogeneous machine designed to implode as soon as it started.

Hon – in Katedral Or The Zig and Puce Crocrodromethese monumental installations, true manifestos of the ephemeral and self -destruction, embody all the complexity of the exhibition. If the “reconstruction” of Hon – in Katedral is a success, that of Cyclops (1969-1994) fails to restore the full extent of this spectacular totem, a real culmination of this collective dynamic.

The exhibition also presents individual creations of Tinguely and Saint Phalle. The latter stood out for a shine – or rather a rifle. Halfway between performance, sculpture and painting, its Shotsare most often documented, photographed, even adapted to television format. Nothing fortuitous: the artist has always managed to capture media attention. The work of this young Franco-American aristocrat has benefited-and continues to benefit from high visibility. Colorful, sometimes brushing against kitsch, fun – at least in appearance -, the work of Saint Phalle, in particular the Nanasremain very popular. Her theme, centered on women and violence-including that which she herself has suffered-, resonates with contemporary concerns. The artist has become a mythical figure, a feminist icon like Frida Kahlo.

The plastic production of Tinguely, although fascinating for children, is darker, less attractive. Composed of recovery materials and complex mechanisms, it expresses a paradoxical balance – an apparent fragility combined with a brute force -, and retains biting irony: that of public useless machines. Sometimes too dispersed in the rooms of the Grand Palais, this work gives off a strange concern when it is isolated. So, Hell, a little startin the evocative title, takes the form of a Memento Mori macabre, facing the theme of death bluntly.