Travelin' Marilyn

She’s 26 feet tall, she’s made of stainless steel and aluminum and she weighs in at some 30,300 lbs.  She has been loaded (in three pieces) on a flatbed truck and is headed, as we speak, across the country from Palm Springs, CA to Hamilton, NJ where she will be included for the summer in a retrospective of the artist Seward Johnson.  She’s been in PS for a little less than two years and I really don’t understand how I missed her.  But, fear not, I was able to take a close-up gander of “Forever Marilyn” last week and I must say I was impressed by its basic grotesqueness and shoe size.  Whimsy does have its place in the art world and this sculpture might just be the epitome of kitsch, Jeff Koons and his balloon dogs be damned.