For issue 50, Visionaire imagined a set of toys as animal companions to the designer figurines from issues 44 and 45. Consisting of elaborate nesting dolls silk-screened in designs by artists like Alex Katz, R. Crumb, and Tim Noble & Sue Webster (whose creation glows in the dark!), ARTIST TOYS came complete with playful accessories like ears, antlers, and horns. “The toy project was sweet on the outside and charming on the inside,” says artist Rob Pruitt. “I simply tacked Winston Churchill’s great quote (‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’) to it, decorated the surface with images of my beloved panda, and crossed my fingers that it would provoke the person playing with it to ponder our collective fascination with this beautiful, threatened creature.” Was ARTIST TOYS a magazine? A multiple? Art or commerce? Many debated whether Visionaire was any longer even a publication — which must have been the goal all along.
