![]() ![]() Other artists have physically incorporated the ubiquitous doll into sculptural representations of daily life. Amer has transferred Barbie’s body proportions onto her costume, making the exaggerated proportions of her body even more startling. Still, it is obvious whose onesie is whose. The outfits are both onesies - garments that should exist without gender, as there are no skirts, heels, or suit jackets to reference traditional women’s and men’s clothing. In her 1995 work “Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie,” artist Ghada Amer printed two suits with the phrases that make up the installation’s title. Ghada Amer, “Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie” (1995), canvas, thread, and hangers, 59 3/4 x 24 1/4 x 4 1/2 inches and 63 x 24 x 6 inches (© Ghada Amer, courtesy the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery) The case had opened a legal door for artists to use Barbie as a symbol for cultural critique. “Part of why I was interested in Barbie as art is that until 2001, when the Utah photographer Tom Forsythe won the lawsuit Mattel had brought against him, this type of art work was considered illegal, which to me was an intriguing concept,” Bradbury told Hyperallergic. In 2005, curator Leonie Bradbury organized a Barbie show at the Montserrat College of Art in Massachusetts that included a few of Forsythe’s images. Ultimately, the salsa-slathered Barbies prevailed: The culinary Barbies were unlikely to comprise a “substitute for products in Mattel’s markets or the markets of Mattel’s licensees,” the court ruled, and Mattel was ordered to pay $1.8 million in the artist’s legal fees. ![]() “I thought the pictures needed something that really said ‘crass consumerism,’ and to me, that’s Barbie,” Forsythe told the New York Times in 2004. ![]() The case hinged on the question of whether Forsythe’s photographs constituted fair use, as Barbie and her image were being invoked in the service of cultural critique. In 1999, Mattel sued artist Tom Forsythe over his 78-photograph series showing the doll in and around household appliances, including in a fondue pot and wrapped in tortillas and covered with salsa in a casserole dish for “Barbie Enchiladas” (1997). She has smile lines and crow’s feet as well, universal traces of a life well lived. Her perfectly plucked eyebrows point into two wisely skeptical arches. The doll maintains her expertly executed eyeliner. In an ironic twist, Burson’s age machine actually played nice with Barbie. Burson told Hyperallergic that the image was rejected. She made the Polaroid Spectra photograph on commission for a book titled The Art of Barbie (1994). In a 1994 work titled “Aged Barbie,” artist Nancy Burson used a so-called “aging machine” - which she helped create - to rack up the years on the doll’s face. Kandice Odister’s “Zooming with Dani (Dani McClain)” (2021) and “Voice Over Queen (Torie Wilkins)” (2021), dioramas inside wooden drawers (photos by Tony Walsh, courtesy Weston Art Gallery)īarbie is forever 19, her molded plastic face protecting her from the forces of gravity and slowing collagen production. ![]()
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