b. 1974
KAWS
KAWS is a Brooklyn-based artist whose influential body of work masterfully synthesizes the worlds of art and design. Across painting, murals, large-scale sculpture, and street art, as well as graphic and production design, his work possesses a sophisticated humor and thoughtful interplay with consumer products through collaborations with global brands. KAWS is often inspired by and appropriates pop culture animations to form a unique artistic vocabulary that spans a broad range of mediums. Now admired for his larger-than-life sculptures and hard-edge paintings that emphasize line and color, KAWS has created a cast of hybrid cartoon and human characters that are perhaps the strongest examples of his exploration of humanity. KAWS has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; the Yuz Museum; Yorkshire Sculpture Park; and the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga. He has also participated in exhibitions at major institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Newcomb Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Deste Art Foundation for Contemporary Art.
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About the artist
KAWS is an American graffiti artist and designer renowned for his toys, prints and his ‘subvertisements.’ Famed for its set of cartoon-like characters, KAWS's art parodies popular cultural icons such as Disney’s Mickey Mouse and operates at the interface between the commercial and fine art worlds and is often compared to the likes of Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons.
Who is KAWS?
Born in 1974 in the metropolitan area of New York, surrounded by a burgeoning graffiti and street art scene, KAWS produced his first pieces whilst in elementary school. It was then that he devised his own tag: KAWS. A meaningless word, he chose it simply because he liked the way the letters looked together. Moving to New York in the 1990s, KAWS began to experiment with an artistic process dubbed ‘Subvertising’. Through subvertising, KAWS would remove advertisements from phone booths and bus stops and replaced them with his own signature cartoon characters, tagging the city with his distinctively parodic style.
"When I am making work I think of when I was younger and how I came upon work, whether it was magazines, stickers, skateboard deck designs or T-shirts. These different things meant something for me when I was younger. All you know is your world that is exciting to you, so I try to make work that disseminates in the same sort of avenues as the stuff that led me to learn about the greater picture of art." - KAWS
Early Works
A decisive moment in the artist's career came when he met the owner of the Japanese toy company Bounty Hunter, Hikaru Iwanaga. Following Iwanaga’s suggestion, KAWS designed a toy for the company, his signature Pop Art-inspired Companion character – a Mickey Mouse-like figure with crossed-out eyes – now KAWS' greatest critical and commercial success. Collaborating with fashion juggernauts like Nike and Dior Homme, Companion is now a worldwide phenomenon that has taken over the world.
Since then, KAWS continued to develop his cartoonesque universe, appropriating and parodying popular cartoons through his signature x-crossed eyes and skull motifs. Two of these bodies of works, Kurfs and Kimpsons, respectively recasting The Smurfs and The Simpsons, have become some of KAWS’ most successful works at auction, fetching sums well above the million-pound threshold. Transformed into his Companion motif, his Untitled (Kimpsons No.1) was one of his most expensive works sold at auction, selling for a whopping £6 million at Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, while his Kurf (HOT DOG) sold for £2.1 million at auction at Sotheby’s, New York.
Influence
KAWS art style and inspiration
KAWS cites traditional artists, such as Chuck Close, Klaus Oldenburg and Gerhard Richter amongst those who have influenced his more commercially successful works. Graffiti is a constant point of reference for the artist, however, having been a key feature of his own artistic career since a very young age.
Amongst the most significant Graffiti artists to have influenced KAWS’s ethos and artistic production is the New York Graffiti icon Futura, aka Futura 2000. Born in New York, Futura was a major influence on the nascent French graffiti scene during the 1980s, and painted backdrops live on-stage for British punk rock band The Clash’s 1981 European tour. Much like KAWS, Futura is a crossover artist and has successfully managed to align himself somewhere between the underground and commercial arts scenes, often working with multinational companies such as Nike, Uniqlo and Levi’s, and streetwear companies Supreme and A Bathing Ape.
KAWS Uniqlo
KAWS, the celebrated artist and designer, is renowned for his iconic characters and vibrant pop art style. His collaborations with notable brands, particularly Uniqlo, have garnered widespread acclaim and popularity. Through these collaborations, KAWS has brought his distinctive aesthetic to a wider audience, merging high art with everyday fashion. The partnership with Uniqlo has resulted in a range of clothing and accessories featuring KAWS' beloved characters, making his art more accessible to fans around the world. This synergy between art and commerce has not only expanded KAWS' reach but also blurred the boundaries between traditional art spaces and the mainstream market, solidifying his status as a cultural phenomenon.
Prints
KAWS Prints
Multiples are by far the most collectable of the KAWS oeuvre, and offer a range of works to become familiar with, as well as a broad spectrum of value. Edition sizes of KAWS prints range from 20 to 250. The characteristic quality of KAWS’s work in this medium and the tremendous demand for them keeps the market moving. Complete sets of 10 screenprints are highly requested by collectors.
Prints enrich any collection, showing another side to a beloved artist’s work or allowing newer collectors to acquire authentic and iconic works at a lower price point. The formal qualities of a screen print or lithograph versus an oil on canvas can be fascinatingly diverse, allowing the artist to experiment in ways that are not possible with an original.
KAWS Iconic Toys
KAWS has created in excess of 100 editions of his most famous characters. Among them is Companion, KAW’s ubiquitous Mickey Mouse- inspired cartoon with Xs for eyes, for most fans Companion has icon status as the symbol of today’s popular culture. There is also Chum, a version of Companion that is reminiscent of the Michelin Man, and Accomplice, another seeming relative of Companion, but with a pair of rabbit ears. These are produced in vinyl, wood, and mixed media.
KAWS figures
KAWS released his own toy figures from his website in 2002, rather than via collaborators, as he had in the past. At that time they were priced at $100 and $500. As with all artists who produce editions, multiples helpfully present collectors with an opportunity to collect at various budget levels. As always smaller and larger edition sizes place work more or less in demand, and value is most often dictated by demand.
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