Djina Wilk

Nowadays, Niki de Saint Phalle is most famous for her Nanas, which are sculptures that are shaped, in terms of theirs outlines, as very feminine figures. With the Nanas Niki de Saint Phallle made different roles of the woman like mother giving birth or brides. The Nanas are all sculptures that vary in sizes. Most of them are life size though. The common characteristics for the Nana sculptures are the shape being very extra ordinary (not conventionally normal) and the decoration being very colorful with black lines.

The picture above depicts one of the Nanas in Hannover. This Nana is beautiful in the feeling of joy and happiness that it gives the observer. The exaggerated proportions of the bottom and the bust give the sculpture a touch of playfulness, which in addition to the strong colors contribute to the positive feeling by the observer. The view of the Nana makes the observer happy. This enables the observer to get more involved in the sculpture. The Nana is depicted in an active way and after the first glance one might ask if she is jumping of joy or if she is about to jump into the water (considering the swimsuit like dress).

Looking upon this Nana from the perspective of Schiller one may question the beauty of her. The first issue that arises is Schiller�s idea of the savage and the barbarian. One could argue that this Nana is too much of a savage in her depiction. She seems to let her feelings rule over her principles since the action (jumping of joy) that she is in seems to be of uncontrolled, though positive, feelings. The sense of the Nana’s feelings is strong enough to affect the observer.

Schiller talks about the force of the nature and the force of the reason, where the first one regards the dominance of the feelings and the latter concerns the dominance of principles. Beauty for Schiller is the state between feelings and principles, between sensing and thinking, where there is a harmony between these two. Beauty makes the restricted existence to an absolute one in the sense that it turns matter to form and feelings to thinking and vice versa. Schiller puts it in the way that beauty “plays”. The ideal of beauty is to be seen as the ideal of humanity. Beauty, aesthetic freedom, can be regarded as an important tool in the aesthetic education of man. A “true” piece of art shall release the observer in a state of equability and free spirit. The more general the feeling is that a piece of art gives the observer and the less restricted the direction is that our mind gets from this piece of art, the better is it.

In addition to this, Schiller means that aesthetic education gives the direction to the good and true way to be. When the man is aesthetic educated, he can in his turn create politics and societies where freedom rule. In this matter Schiller talks about controlled and reasonable freedom where he dismisses the revolution of freedom in France due to its savage and barbarian streaks respectively. In this sense, Schiller turns the issue of beauty and aesthetic into a moral one.

Elaborating the thought mentioned earlier, the Nana is too much matter in order to be harmonic and beautiful, according to Schiller. Instead of creating a state of equability, her matter emotionally affects the observer. A piece of art like this that flatter or play with our senses makes us weaker in our principles. The observer feels the Nana more than beholds it. Although one may regard the Nana as beautiful, passionate art, Schiller would see this statement as a contradiction since the affect of beauty is the freedom from passion.

Now, one could further argue that Niki de Saint Phalle’s purpose with the Nanas in general was to create archetypal female figures and in that way show the woman’s position in the society. The exaggerated proportions of the bottom and the bust may want us to think about Niki de Saint Phalle’s ideas about woman being a sexual figure in the society. This would mean that we behold the Nana more then feel it. One could then make the assumption that the Nana now includes both feeling and reason.

However, the sensuous experience of the Nana is stronger than the notion of reason

and form which still leads to Schiller arguing against Nana being aesthetic beautiful.

This is due to the notion of aesthetic beauty, which lies in its balance between and its freedom from forces.