January 19, 1995: Vol26n13: Will the Real Barbie Please Stand Up?

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
Nude Barbie sprayed silver and stalking Times Square at midnight!
Barbie sprayed gold on an "Altar of Love"! A Busby Berkeley chandelier
made of real tan Barbies! Barbie Noir! She's 35, built like a
voluptuous ingenue, sweet and sexy and dressed to kill. We can't get
enough of her. When Mother Mattel decided to pay tribute to its middle
aged dollie, she commissioned 100 artists to produce their take on the
old girl.
	No problem.
	They complied in pen and ink, animation cel, gouache, sheet
metal, paper, paint, clay and prismacolor, to name only a few of the
media employed.
	The result is the book, "The Art of Barbie," a shiny, sparkly,
colorful and weird collection of Barbie-art edited by Craig Yoe, a toy
inventor, graphic artist and prizewinning animator. Published by
Workman Publishing, "a significant portion" of the book's royalties
will be donated to The Children Affected by AIDS Foundation.
	Among the artists whose work appears are Alan E. Cober, UB
Distinguished Visiting Artist, (page 73, the surreal "Barbie with
Handy Horse," ink and prismacolor), and UB illustration grad Joel
Peter Johnson (page 108, "La Barbie Vergine," an oil on board version
of Barbie as Renaissance Madonna).
	The work of UB illustration graduate student Quenby Chunko
shows up as well on page 36. Her humorous "Prehistoric Traces"
situates the mysterious and eternal platinum blonde on the walls of
the caves at Lascaux wearing magenta heels and carrying a handbag.
	But that ain't all. There's a terra cotta jar from whose
surface juts a rhythmic series of naked, perky, earth-colored
Barbie-torsos. Vegas Barbies pose in evening attire against slot
machines. Barbie shows up en camouflage avec Beavis and Butthead
(who've interchanged Barbie's and Ken's heads) and goes on to glow in
gauze and net frou-frou as the American princess she certainly is.
	She's 'toon, Hogarthian icon, a churlish shoe maven a la
Imelda Marcos and star of a "rompin,' stompin' all-star blue-devil
band."
	Oddly (although there are outfits commercially available), she
never seems to congeal in the artists' minds as nurse, doctor, airline
stewardess, firefighter or Marine Corps lieutenant. Instead, they
strip away her pretense and photograph her recumbent on a sea of
French fries.
	Then there are the puns. Rick Tharp, for instance, puts
another shrimp on the...
	And William Wegman sticks his Weimaraner Fay Wray in a Barbie
house, which she "breaks" - "Housebroken" - get it?
	Marian Jones photographs the doll as "Nude Barbie Descending a
Staircase," one of many works included here that parody artists from
Botticelli to Edward Hopper.
	Barbie is essentially a fashion queen, however, and designers
from Amy Chan to Bob Mackie do her up in everything from silver skirts
to chest tattoos and razor blades. Vidal Sassoon does her hair and
it's not bad.
	"Supermodel" Claudia Schiffer shows up as a Barbie
wannabe. Frank Lindow pickles the doll in one of those voodoo
bottles. E.V. Day mummifies her, but lets her skinny little bare feet
stick out of the bandages.
	And sadly, but not finally, Frederick's of Hollywood tries to
turn her into a tart but fails, proving once and for all that la
Bambolina (page 45 by Guido Crepax), although frequently tamed into
bridal attire or tight capri pants, will never be mastered.