Barbie: A pop culture icon gets an artful makeover thanks to Toronto artist Mark Gleberzon

Astronaut. Doctor. Engineer. Chef. A game show host and a paratrooper. According to Mattel, over the past 64 years, Barbara Millicent Roberts has pursued more than 200 careers. But when it comes to visual arts, this ambitious gal better known as Barbie has always been more of a dilettante with her easel and pottery wheel.

Even without any recognizable talent, Barbie has made her mark on the art world, holding the position of chief muse.

Most famously, in what would become his last painting, Andy Warhol captured her blond likeness and blank smile in his signature Pop Art style. To be fair, Warhol’s 1986 portrait wasn’t actually of the doll: she was a stand-in for trendy jewelry artist BillyBoy*, who owned more than 11,000 Barbies. Embracing camp and glam, BillyBoy* was the first designer commissioned to create his own models for Mattel: there was 1985’s sleek and chic “Le Nouveau Theatre De La Mode,” who wore a mini version of BillyBoy*’s luxe gold-chain necklace. In 1986, high-fashion “Feelin’ Groovy Barbie,” with her chic dark sunglasses, black nail polish and eye-poking shoulder pads, looked like she tippytoed off the set of a Janet Jackson video.

Like Warhol, Toronto mixed-media artist Mark Jeremy Gleberzon didn’t envision his Barbie portrait series in 2015 as an attempt to capture the doll’s likeness.

A long-time fixture at art fairs and galleries, many of Gleberzon’s colour-soaked textual paintings and mixed-media works over the past three decades have been ongoing studies of a single object, such as a Louis-style chair he inherited from his parents’ home and a dress form that reminded him of his mother. Much of his art pays homage to the strong beloved female figures in his life, particularly his mom and his grandmother, who was also a painter.

As a ’70s kid, Gleberzon grew up with all the familiar pop-culture icons but recalls not playing much with the toys of the day. Still, as he began examining his art practice more closely, he realized that some pop influences had seeped in. After his first visit to Barbie Expo in Montreal, where he spent six hours studying the more than 1,000 dolls on display at the underground mall exhibition, he made a connection between the doll’s style and his grandmother.

“When I look at photos of her and her friends in the early ’60s, she certainly didn’t have the look of a Barbie,” he says. “But people would tart themselves up with the bullet bras and the girdles even just to go shopping.”

Shot mostly against a white backdrop, Gleberzon began capturing Barbies of this era with their sultry eyes and Cupid’s bow lips. He took some photos during that first visit to Barbie Expo, a must-see for any aficionado (though currently closed for renovations). Recognizing that Barbie’s zero-fat figure has been criticized for upholding impossible physical ideals, Gleberzon’s portraits feature head shots revealing only her giraffelike neck.

“This way you really have no sense what her body is like,” he said. “I think it’s important that the story is being told primarily with her face. Barbie, over the decades, has always represented a mirror, or she’s held up a mirror to what’s going on in current trends and pop culture.”

One of Gleberzon’s earliest photos, “Rose,” came about as a happy accident. While shooting, he didn’t realize that his camera was not properly set. After tweaking the out-of-focus image, Barbie’s blond tresses, peacock-blue eyeshadow and fuchsia lips were still instantly recognizable despite the fuzzy blur. Some people find the series unsettling, but they’ve become some of his most popular works.

“I reinterpreted it as the idea of it being a mirage of memories,” he said. “It’s the idea that when we try to recall someone from our past, we will remember the basic shapes and colours, but the fine details are always missing.”

Besides his classic Barbie portraits, Gleberzon added a Marie Antoinette-style photo series to the roster with candy-floss pink hair and a cheeky “Let them eat cake!” tattooed across where her clavicle would be if she actually had a skeleton.

“Sugar’s Daddy” Ken also entered in the mix, with steely arctic-blue eyes and his own chest patterned with tattoos that nod to the mythology and to elements of the dolls’ history. Using sketches and stock imagery, Gleberzon worked with a digital artist to create the tattoo designs that appear on his hairless plastic chest.

For those desiring something edgier, there are a few shimmering Barbie-on-Barbie nudes enjoying a fun night in.

Gleberzon currently sells his paintings, prints and custom work through his website, markgleberzon.com, but you can find his Barbie portraits at Collective 131 gallery in the lower level of the Holt Renfrew Centre until the end of July. Like many of us, he is hopeful that the Barbie movie hits the right note of “tongue firmly in cheek” that the early trailers promise. But will it mean more interest in his photos?

“It’s like any series that an artist does. We will always find an ebb and flow in terms of how it’s embraced. I’m certainly hoping that this taps into something and evokes that sense of nostalgia and people wanting the embodiment of something that reminds them of their childhood,” said Gleberzon.

“I’m hoping my art will play into that and will be the embodiment of memories.”

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