The Art in the Toys

Frank Kozik is arguably the best known toy designer, with his iconic "labbit" as one of the several faces of Kidrobot. There's an exhibition of Kozik's work that opened last week in Culver City, CA at Billy Shire Fine Arts. Along with oil paintings featuring Mao there are also several sculptures and even a labbit stool. This exhibition brings up an issue which I have been grappling with- are these toys or are they art? Where is the line? Does it even matter? Placed in a gallery context, Kozik's toys become sculpture. I would argue that set in someone's collection, on their windowsill, or in a glass cabinet in their living room, Kozik's toys become sculptures as well. Paul Budnitz has described art toys as a type of "folk art" (I Am Plastic, Intro). In an essay in the book Full Vinyl: The Subversive Art of Designer Toys (Collins Design, 2006), Carlo McCormick, curator and senior editor of Paper Magazine, places vinyl figures in the trajectory of artist multiples. Mccormick cleverly draws connections between contemporary art toys and multiples created by the Editions M.A.T (Multiplication d'Art Transformable), founded by Daniel Spoerri in 1959 and the multiples generated by Keith Haring and his "Pop Shop" of the 1980s. 

"Here's the philosophy behind the Pop Shop: I wanted to continue the same sort of communication as with the subway drawings. I wanted to attract the same wide range of people and I wanted it to be a place where, yes, not only collectors could come, but also kids from the Bronx…this was still an art statement."- Keith Haring 

An important aspect to keep in mind is that the artists who are creating art toys are doing so often as tangental to their main creative practice. There's a great interview that Paul Budnitz did with Kozik. This is how Kozik explains the factors that contribute to his art, and in particular his appropriation of Mao's image:

1. My love of and desire to make 'Pop Art'...what better than a large, shiny plastic object. 

2. My fascination with Mao 

3. My fascination with 'branding'

4. The utter oddness of the current '3rd road' approach in China

5. The ability to produce an exceedingly odd object of no value whatsoever, except it makes people go 'whoa... what the fuck?' ...and then want to own it.

6. My love of the utterly absurd.

Billy Shire Fine Arts

When talking about the boundaries between toy and art, Takashi Murakami and Yoshimoto Nara often enter the conversation. Murakami and Nara use anime and manga for inspiration. Murakami has created work that has invaded the consumer world, combining "high art" with "low art"- fine art with popular culture. In 2003, he collaborated with toy manufacturers to create the '"Superflat Museum", a series of plastic figures to be sold as free gifts that come with chewing gum at convenience store locations. 

When asked about straddling the line between art and commercial products, Murakami said,

"I don’t think of it as straddling. I think of it as changing the line. What I’ve been talking about for years is how in Japan, that line is less defined. Both by the culture and by the post-War economic situation. Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of ‘high art.’ In the West, it certainly is dangerous to blend the two because people will throw all sorts of stones. But that's okay—I’m ready with my hard hat." (Wikipedia)

To Murakami, the gulf between his large scale sculpture and his art toys is not very big- he sees the connection as a fluid one. 


Referring to the difference between the consumer- made toys and his fine art, Murakami stated:

"Of course, the consumer group will be different, but it's the same aesthetic form in the end. And I would like it if these consumer groups were one and the same." 

He also acknowledges the political edge that his work has:

"While it is not meant as a blow at the art world per se, it is a political statement. Art does not have to be in a gallery. It does not have to cost thousands of dollars. It does not have to be elitist. It can be entertaining, and available." (from Plastic Culture by Woodrow Phoenix, 2006)

New York Times, from exhibition at Brooklyn Museum, 2008