Artist Statement

In my world, toys are not just for children. To me, some of them have an energetic presence comparable to a soul. They have vibrant unique personalities, and lives of their own. I fill my studio with toys. They find a home among my other vessels of inspiration: statues, models, figures, and other icons. In one corner, Barbie climbs a large human skeleton; in another, she holds a plastic slab of meat. My toys are my friends; they help me enter the realm of imagination, fantasize, and create my art. Barbie has always been a part of my gang of inspirations. She has always had a very special place in my toy menagerie.

Like me, Barbie grew up in the 1960s, during a time of great change. She was part of a zeitgeist, a tremendous feminine awakening that began to break through the patriarchy that has long dominated society. Unfortunately, the advancement has moved forward with agonizing slowness and has been met with many setbacks. But, before Barbie, there were only baby dolls made for “mothers-in-training.” The first generation of girls who grew up with feminism grew up with Barbie, a sophisticated grown-up doll. Barbie has taught us for decades that girls are powerful; that they can grow up to do anything they want to do and be anything they want to be. She is a symbol of aspiration itself; of feminine empowerment, possibility, and potential.

Barbie has made appearances in my art for a long time. It is difficult to define Barbie. She is a cultural phenomenon, an archetypal figure. She is a bonafide celebrity, a subject worthy for Andy Warhol to portray alongside the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. Barbie has many personas. She is an astronaut, a nurse, a scientist, and a flight attendant. She is Jane Goodall and Misty Copeland. But all the while, she is still Barbie.

In this way, Barbie has a somewhat eternal nature, like a deity. She is a very new deity, and her mythology is still unfolding, but check back in a thousand years. I think it is fascinating to imagine what her lore will become. You never know. Her humble beginnings as a plastic toy may be long forgotten.

It has been an amazing experience to work with Barbie. The paintings in Pink Pop are four of my own new personas for her.

First, I envisioned Barbie as the Nature Queen, an icon of the feminine divine who presides over the natural world. While masculine energy exploits the earth along with its non-human inhabitants, feminine energy reveres and nurtures the living world of which we are part. With the birth of feminism and the birth of Barbie, we also saw the birth of ecology and the environmental movement.

Bees have been buzzing through my paintings since I began making art, so I wanted to include a Barbie Bee in this project. There is a vital interconnectedness between all life in our world. Bees are an essential part of this web of life. The scientific community has declared them the most important species on Earth. Without pollinators, the cycle would break, and life as we know it would end. They are reminders of the delicate connections between all life forms on Earth.

In this series, Barbie also attends a glamorous surrealist ball. In 2015, I hosted an actual surrealist ball in collaboration with Bob Self, the late great Master of Ceremonies. We tried to channel the phantasmagoric spirit of Salvador Dalí’s surrealist balls and the elegant black and white balls of Truman Capote. The writer André Breton described Surrealism as an attempt to resolve the two states of dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory. I have imagined Barbie attending our ball where dreams and reality converge.

Last but not least, Barbie and I have something in common… a passion for pink. Perhaps she prefers pink purely because it’s pretty, perky, and playful. I pick pink pigment as part of my pallet for perplexing purposes. People proclaim I paint pictures that are peculiar, but I propose the pictures I paint ponder poetic prophecy. I profess, sometimes I pick pink for the pure pleasure of its peace and positivity. For whatever purpose, pink permeates plenty of my paintings. I produced my “Pink Pop” portrait precisely for pink’s poetic power.

— Mark Ryden, October, 2022