Shooting Painting American Embassy

Niki de Saint Phalle · 1961

This is Shooting Painting American Embassy, by Niki de Saint Phalle, nineteen sixty-one. Bags of paint were embedded in plaster along with a shoe, an axe, a toy gun, a metal seat and wire mesh — and then shot at with a rifle, so the picture finished itself by bleeding.

Medium Paint, plaster, wood, plastic bags, shoe, twine, metal seat, axe, metal can, toy gun, wire mesh, shot pellets, and other objects on wood · Dimensions 96 3/8 x 25 7/8 x 8 5/8" (244.8 x 65.7 x 21.9 cm) · Credit Gift of the Niki Charitable Art Foundation

Hanging beside it in Gallery 408: Glove (for Parkett no. 4), Black Girl's Window

Works like this one elsewhere in the museum: One: Number 31, 1950, Tapestry no. 6, My August, Work, La Monte Young's Composition 1960 #10 (to Bob Morris) performed by Nam June Paik during Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik, Städtisches Museum, Wiesbaden, September 1–23, 1962, La Monte Young's Composition 1960 #10 (to Bob Morris) performed by Nam June Paik during Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik, Städtisches Museum, Wiesbaden, September 1–23, 1962