Abstract
Walking into the exhibition War (What Is It Good For?), at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, last spring, viewers were presented with a dramatic confrontation.1 A life-size, green toy soldier took aim at three machine gun-toting men dressed in camouflage fatigues, the contrast effectively coupling fantasy and force. With vestiges of plastic not yet removed from the seams, Yoram Wolberger's Toy Soldier (2001) appeared freshly pulled from its mold, one of perhaps thousands of identical units ready for action. Its lurid color and elastic anatomy elicited memories of heroic battle on countless household floors. Cropped to three-quarter length, Leon Golub's Mercenaries I (1979) had the startling immediacy—and casual demeanor—of a temporal fragment.
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