Jo Anna Isaak

  • JEFF KOONS: NOT FOR REPRO

    JEFF KOONS HAS DISPLACED much from the larger world to the world of art—objects and the forms of objects, images, and genres of narrative. Among his displaced objects are basketballs and vacuum cleaners. The forms he has displaced include that of a toy rabbit, which was made of inflatable plastic when he found it. To present this form in the art world, he cast it in stainless steel. Having found other forms in kitsch statuettes of various sorts, he has had them reproduced with meticulous care, often at enormous size. Thus a small ceramic figure of a bathing woman becomes larger than life. With

  • Jo Anna Isaak

    FOR THEIR STARS, the very successful Ken and Barbie dolls, the people at Mattel toys have invented a whole young-adult romance: Ken and Barbie go on a date, Ken and Barbie go to the beach, Ken and Barbie go to the movies, Ken and Barbie go dancing, and, eventually, Ken and Barbie get married—all of these activities involving the purchase of new costumes, which is why they were devised in the first place. So far as I know, however, the couple’s progress after the wedding has been left to a satiric ditty I heard on the radio once. There, a marital therapist explained why “the marriage was a failya”: