Nana
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Nana (mythology), mother of Attis is a female mythological deity. It is also the title of Nana, novel by Émile Zola, a painting by Manet and a series of statues by Niki de Saint Phalle.
In 1877, French artist Edouard Manet (exhibited "Nana", a life-size portrayal of an prostitute in undergarments, standing before her fully clothed gentleman caller. The model for it was the popular courtesan Henriette Hauser. Manet was so much taken with the description of the "precociously immoral" Nana in Zola's L'Assommoir that he gave the title "Nana" to his portrait of Henriette Hauser. The painting was rejected by the hanging committee for the Paris Salon of 1877.
Niki de Saint Phalle, when asked about her own Nanas, is reported to have stressed that it was not an intellectual connection to Zola that she was aiming at, but more a kind of "fusion" with the opulent forms of Rubens. This in a way ties in with Paulus' description of Blanche d'Antigny, the principal model for Nana: Not a beauty in the classical Greek sense. But what a complexion! What an opulence of forms! A Rubens!!
