Niki de Saint Phalle embodied the art of self-reinvention. In the 1960s, fate led her to the West Coast, the site of her last incarnation, where she brought her historically misrepresented practice to sublime heights until her passing in 2002. Across the deserts of San Diego and Las Vegas and the hills of Malibu, the Franco-American artist produced exuberant, monumental works with a signature vitality that set her apart from her Nouveau Réalisme male contemporaries. Through Saint Phalle’s oeuvre and conversations with her inner circle, Yann Perreau examines her attraction to the region, her personal challenges, and a timely renewed interest in her work.

To outsiders the place looked like a hippie colony, a place full of longhairs and dogs, children running free, and hand-held video cameras recording it all. Inside, it was a place of possibility. Although there were recognizable classes, the motivating idea was to create more informal spaces where artist teachers and their students discussed ideas and developed projects, most outside the traditional frameworks of art-making, projects that aimed to question the very institutional construction of art itself.

Every good book is essentially a mystery. What secrets might be revealed between the covers? Whose story is it that is being told? Where are we going? How will it all end? Can we ever really understand? Why is so much so easily forgotten? What is it that we are longing to remember?