They burned down the art museum: in the ashes, a new world will unfold.
This exhibition at the Grand Palais focuses on three figures: Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, and their friend Pontus Hultén. The first two were artists and a married couple, while the third was the first director of the Centre Pompidou. The exhibition’s narrative is woven from the intersection of their creative work and careers.
Niki’s work is instantly recognizable: bold, joyful, cartoonish female figures paired with dark, unsettling materials. One piece, titled *Sunday Promenade*, features a metal structure covered in white canvas, densely packed with various objects that form crown-like protrusions, vaguely resembling a dinosaur or a dragon. The explosive colors were created by embedding paint bags into the dragon’s body and then shooting at them. She was a sharpshooter, reportedly having started firing guns at the age of three. The imagery of monsters permeates her work and is linked to her private life; this giant dragon once sat in her bedroom for a long time.
Her "shooting paintings" were made the same way: paint bags embedded in canvas, then shot to create an explosion. For her, this subversion was a form of liberation—a response to childhood trauma (she was sexually abused by her father starting at age eleven) and an exploration of her identity as a woman and a female artist. She aimed her rage at her father, all men—young and old—her brothers, society, the church, convents, schools, family, her mother, and herself. After firing, she declared: Victims, ready, set, fire, red, blue, yellow. The paint is weeping, painting is dead. I killed painting. It has been resurrected. This is a war without victims.
Tinguely, on the other hand, was a creator of anarchy and chaos. He used everyday objects and discarded parts to build motorized metal contraptions—machines that served no purpose other than to make a massive racket and eventually self-destruct. The funniest piece was his 1960 work at MoMA, *Homage to New York*, which involved other artists and engineers, including Robert Rauschenberg. The installation was composed of scrap metal, industrial waste, paper rolls, and internal combustion engines. It began with a cacophony of noise and lights, but by the twenty-seventh minute, the scrap metal, wheels, bicycle horns, pianos, bathtubs, and go-karts all malfunctioned, sparking and eventually setting the entire assembly on fire. The audience included the Governor of New York; the museum called the police, and the fire department rushed in to hack the installation to pieces with axes to extinguish the flames.
"Useless machines" like *Homage to New York* do not celebrate mechanization or progress; rather, they expose the destructive relationship between human life and mechanization. To Tinguely, the reckless impulse toward mechanization in modern consumer culture is a path toward disaster and death. Another of his works, once installed on the terrace of the Pompidou, was so loud when it turned that neighbors complained until it was eventually dismantled.
The two also collaborated on large-scale projects. Their work at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm was a "cathedral" that required visitors to enter through the vagina of this Mother Earth figure. Inside, there was a small gallery of moving paintings, a mini-cinema, a drink stand, a lovers' corner, a slide, a goldfish pond, and a telephone booth. By using the female body as a cathedral, the piece elevated fertility, sensory experience, and a spirit of play into a collective, participatory experience. The 1977 opening show at the Pompidou was also their creation: a giant crocodile and a structure that was half-dragon, half-ship, and half-cave, half-palace. Inside was a carnival-like spectacle featuring a haunted house, a giant pinball machine, a free chocolate vending machine, and interactive game zones. The core was a metal structure, the head was plastic, and one of the feet was encased in real chocolate. The infernal machines, driven by pulleys and motors, created such a massive metallic roar that the museum staff were miserable every day.
Honestly, this exhibition is not easy to share online, because looking at the pictures alone can feel uncomfortably ugly. That was exactly how I felt when I first stepped into the gallery.
If you feel the same way, you’re actually right. These artists had a very strong intent to oppose: they opposed efficiency, functionality, the dominance of certain centralisms, and consumption (self-destruction), so naturally, they opposed aesthetics as well.
As I spent more time in the exhibition, the aversion to the "ugly" faded, replaced by a sense of freedom. It’s much like the feeling of reaching middle age and suddenly realizing you are free because you no longer have anxiety about your appearance.
Such subversive works brought me directly into contact with the most essential elements of creation. It is a kind of energy that forces the creator to do something, to destroy what already exists, and to leave a mark. And in that process, it brings joy, humor, and laughter to oneself and others.
Things that are too serious are hard to loosen up. The idea of being so subversive that you end up burning down an art museum, like in *Homage to New York*, feels brilliant. Watching their work also burned away some of the old things in my own mind. In the ashes, a new world will unfold.
Viki Kuo
Originally from Taoyuan. Since 2007, she has worked in contemporary art galleries and museums in Taipei, Beijing, and Shanghai, focusing on exhibition curation, artist research, and observation of the art scene. After moving to Paris in 2020, she has been responsible for the curation and instruction of the Paris–Taipei Express art courses, focusing on using a researcher's perspective and firsthand experience in the art world to help readers and students understand the creative concepts, art history, cultural background, and viewing methods of contemporary art. To date, Viki Kuo / Paris-Taipei Express has organized and hosted over 60 online and in-person (Paris/Taiwan) lectures and courses. She has served as an art lecturer for institutions including the EAC (École d'Art et de Culture) in Paris (2024), IESA (Institut d'Études Supérieures des Arts) in Paris (2024–2026), OneArt Taipei (2024–2025), the Landseed Life Aesthetics Foundation, and Tongxueshe.
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