Mattel

Mattel is an American toy company that enters this account through a Barbie exhibition and the unveiling of an Andy Warhol portrait. The episode brings together Mattel’s public presentation of its doll, the collections and designs assembled around it, and Warhol’s distinctly unenthusiastic response to his own likeness.

The Barbie Exhibition

On February 10, 1986, a Mattel car collected Warhol at 7:30 and took him to Pier 92, at 55th Street and Twelfth Avenue, for Billy Boy’s large Barbie exhibition. The show placed the doll within a wider display of fashion and popular-culture material. Its cases included images of Edie Sedgwick and Warhol, Vogue material, and a Cow poster from Billy Boy’s collection. Warhol wondered how Billy Boy had found time to collect antique couture clothing and design jewelry, and noted that Bettina had done a great deal for him.

The Portrait and Its Reception

The exhibition also unveiled a portrait of Warhol. He disliked how it looked and cringed when Mattel’s president said he could not wait to see it. Warhol had not known how the portrait came about: Fred Hughes told him the arrangement had gone through Billy Boy, who had apparently suggested Warhol to Mattel. Because the commission had taken him by surprise, Warhol planned to clarify the account with Fred.

Barbie as an Image

Warhol’s reaction to the portrait sat alongside his comparison of Barbie’s changing appearance. He preferred the fifties doll’s more closed mouth and sensual lips to the smiling eighties version, whose expression he could not understand; he also said he had never related to Barbie because she was too puny. Someone had told him that Arab clients had commissioned a larger Barbie. Fred Hughes also said Bettina had been the model for the original Barbie. The diary thus records Mattel’s exhibition not just as a display of dolls, but as a setting where questions of design, scale, image, and the making of a cultural icon surfaced through Warhol’s observations.