Kewpie Doll

In the characteristic Phillips style, Kewpie Doll is an assemblage of disparate elements, ostensibly put together with collage-like spontaneity, but in fact carefully planned and finely executed, with a commercial artist’s emphasis on immaculate uniformity of surface finish. Recognisable elements from the Phillips canon are apparent, from the pinball-table stylings of the stars and stripes to the fragment of a technical drawing that looks like it could have been cut from the pages of a car maintenance manual. The resulting combination seems designed to disorient the viewer; the ‘Kewpie Doll’ text is mirrored (no such doll actually figures in the painting), and the area on the left simultaneously over- and under-laps elements in a way that would be difficult to achieve with a simple collage. The effect of the painting is reminiscent of the sensory overload of daily life, and in an increasingly media saturated world feels as apt in 2021 as it would have done in the early 1960s heyday of British Pop Art.