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If you thought Chihuly was big, wait till you see Niki.
So boasts the Atlanta Botanical Garden, which is putting together an exhibit it predicts will be even more popular than its 2004 blockbuster show of Dale Chihuly's glass sculptures. That event shattered attendance records, was held over for two months, and nearly doubled the Midtown institution's membership.
Buoyed by that success, Executive Director Mary Pat Matheson has been working for the past year to assemble about 35 vividly colorful sculptures by the late Niki de Saint Phalle. The show opens April 29 and will run for six months.
Well-known in Europe --- she has "rock star" status in her native France, Matheson says --- de Saint Phalle is known for the large, curvaceous female figures she called "Nanas" and for whimsical pieces that have become popular landmarks in cities from Jerusalem to San Diego. One of her most famous works is the playful Stravinsky Fountain, made in collaboration with her husband, sculptor Jean Tinguely, which attracts visitors to a plaza near the Pompidou Center in Paris.
The exhibit, "Niki in the Garden," will be the largest yet of her outdoor sculpture. Mosaic-covered lions, frolicking Nanas, a multicolored tree trunk topped with snakes and other pieces will arrive from museums and private collections in France, Switzerland and Germany and from her archive in California, where she lived in her later years.
Many of the sculptures are monumental, some weighing as much as 6,000 pounds, and most will be shipped intact. Because they will be custom-crated and moved long distances, and because of foreign taxes and border fees, the exhibit will cost more than the roughly $1 million it cost to stage "Chihuly in the Garden." Turner Broadcasting, which announced a $4 million gift to the garden last year, is the title sponsor.
Matheson believes "Niki in the Garden" will appeal to fans of the Chihuly show as well as those who regret missing it. She also expects to draw more people from outside Atlanta because of the international nature of the artist.
"With Chihuly, about 30 percent of visitors came from outside of the region," Matheson said.
De Saint Phalle is becoming better known in the United States, said Mary Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection, a renowned public sculpture garden at the University of California --- San Diego, which commissioned her first outdoor sculpture in the United States. That 1983 work, "Sun God," inspired a popular student festival that continues today.
The artist was the only woman member of the Nouveaux Realistes, a group of avant-gardists that included such sculptors as Christo and Arman.
"She never would have called herself a feminist, but she really was. She was fierce about being taken seriously, despite the playful nature of her work," Beebe said.
In many ways, "Niki in the Garden" is a natural. De Saint Phalle spent many years working on permanent sculpture gardens, including Queen Califia's Magical Circle in Escondido, Calif. She spent about 20 years working on her most ambitious project, the Tarot Garden, on land in Italy's Tuscany region made available by wealthy friends. The sprawling scupture garden opened to the public in 1998.
She helped pay for that garden in part by marketing a perfume bearing her name, which is still sold.
The botanical garden promises there will be a few surprises in the exhibit, including a "slightly risque" piece in the orchid garden, said Matheson.
Unlike with Chihuly's fragile blown glass, visitors to the botanical garden will be encouraged to touch and even climb inside many of de Saint Phalle's sturdy sculptures. Some are made of polyester on metal frames; some are ceramic. Many are covered in mosaics of semiprecious stones, glass, mirrors, ceramic tiles, shells and mica.
One piece, an alligatorlike creature called the "Nikigator," made of chicken wire and plaster, has a hollow center inviting children and adults to climb inside, said Matheson.
The sculptures have always had a special appeal to children, something de Saint Phalle intended, said her granddaughter, Bloum Cardenas, a San Francisco artist who also helps run a foundation to promote and preserve de Saint Phalle's artwork.
Among de Saint Phalle's large-scale works is a playground in Jerusalem.
De Saint Phalle died in 2002 at the age of 71 in La Jolla, Calif., where she had lived since 1994.
"I often describe her [as] a magician, and making big projects was part of her magic," said Cardenas. "I think she would have really, really loved this project."
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
