Between Miniature and Monumentality: Basic Insights about the Doll and its Meaning in the Tension between Material, Statement and Action in the Work of Niki de Saint Phalle

Abstract

Dolls can be found as readymades (Objets trouvé) in the work of Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 – 2002) until the 1980s and are examined here for the first time – also in contrast to the well-known ‘Nanas’. Compared to the large-scale projects and the large-format works into which dolls have been partially integrated, the doll becomes a diminutive of the idea of childhood and being a child as well as an attribute of the critically evaluated role of woman. Here, the doll is neither a perpetuating abbreviated pictorial symbol nor part of a separate artistic pictorial language, but manifests itself as a material that functions within this whole language system (P. Restany) of the work as a sculptural addendum. Together with other objects, the doll arranged on the work surfaces reveals a private as well as a political interpretation in the context of its time.