2002
In the beginning, Brian Donnelly was just a kid from Jersey City, New Jersey, who got into the graffiti thing. KAWS was his tag, chosen simply because he liked the way it looked. Today, KAWS creates all kinds of art — there are KAWS figures and toys, sculptures and colorful drawings, paintings and prints that appropriate pop phenomena like the Smurfs, the Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants.
In the late 1990s, the artist, a 1996 graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, was making a living as an illustrator for the animation studio Jumbo Pictures. Like young Hansel and Gretel with their trail of crumbs, KAWS would mark the morning route to his downtown Manhattan office with “subvertising,” “interrupting” fashion advertisements by adding his colorful character Bendy, its sinuous length sliding playfully around the likes of a Calvin Klein perfume bottle or supermodel Christy Turlington.
These creations gained a following, to the point where work posted in the morning would disappear by lunchtime. Even in those early days, KAWS was hot on the resale market.
“When I was doing graffiti,” he once explained, “it meant nothing to me to make paintings if I wasn’t reaching people.”
Instead of seeking entrée to the elite New York art world (which, frankly, wasn’t looking for a street artist anyway), KAWS moved to Japan, where a flourishing youth culture welcomed visionaries like him.
In 1999, he partnered with Bounty Hunter, a Japanese toy and streetwear brand, to release his first toy. Companion — an eight-inch-tall vinyl reimagining of Mickey Mouse, with a skull-and-crossbones head and trademark XX eyes — debuted with a limited run of 500. It sold out quickly.
Companion was the first of more than 130 toy designs, which came to include such characters as Chum, Blitz, Be@rbrick, BFF and Milo, each immediately recognizable as KAWS figures by their XX eyes. Fans have proved insatiable. In 2017, MoMA’s online store announced the availability of a limited supply of KAWS Companion figures; as avid collectors logged on to stake their claim, the website crashed — multiple times.
Companion is the most visible of the KAWS posse, appearing over the past decade in new postures and combinations in monumental KAWS statues and other works. These include Along the Way (2013), an 18-foot-tall wooden sculpture of two Companions leaning on each other for support; Together (2016), two Companions in a friendly embrace, which debuted during an exhibition of KAWS’s work at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in Texas; and KAWS:HOLIDAY (2018), a 92-foot-long inflatable Companion floating on its back in Seoul’s Seokchon Lake. The sculptures were re-created as toys, blurring the lines between art and commerce.
KAWS’s visual language may be drawn from cartoons, but his work doesn’t necessarily evoke childlike joy.
“My figures are not always reflecting the idealistic cartoon view that I grew up on,” he explains in the catalogue for the Fort Worth exhibition. “Companion is more real in dealing with contemporary human circumstances . . . . I think when I’m making work it also often mirrors what’s going on with me at that time.”
KAWS's résumé reads like a record of major 21st-century pop-culture moments. It includes his work with streetwear brands like A Bathing Ape and Supreme; his design for the cover of Kanye West’s 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak; and his collaboration with designer Kim Jones on the Dior Homme Spring/Summer 2019 collection, Jones’s debut as the fashion brand’s creative director.
Learn how to spot a fake KAWS art toy, and browse authentic KAWS figures, prints, sculptures and mixed media works on 1stDibs.
KAWS Running Chum announcement 2012
By KAWS
Located in NEW YORK, NY
Vintage 2012 KAWS exhibition invitation Published on the occasion of: “IMAGINARY FRIENDS”: Galerie Perrotin in Paris, 2012 (imagery: KAWS Running Chum). Offset printed. 5x7.5 inche...
Lithograph, Offset
KAWS SMALL LIE Companion 2 works (KAWS Companion)
By KAWS
Located in NEW YORK, NY
KAWS SMALL LIE 2017: Set of 2 works. Each new and sealed in their original packaging. These KAWS figurative pieces are a rendition of Small Lie produced in collaboration with Qatar M...
Resin, Vinyl
Original Fake 2006 (KAWS Japan announcement)
By KAWS
Located in NEW YORK, NY
KAWS Original Fake 2006: A rare, much historic invitation published on the occasion of a KAWS Medicom Toy reception at KAWS' Original Fake Tokyo sho...
Offset, Paper, Lithograph
KAWS Passing Through Companion 2018 (KAWS companion)
By KAWS
Located in NEW YORK, NY
KAWS Grey Passing Through Companion 2018. New and sealed in its original packaging. The most iconic of the KAWS Companions, this passing through piece was published by KAWS One Med...
Resin, Vinyl
KAWS Exposed 1999 (KAWS 1999 artist book)
By KAWS
Located in NEW YORK, NY
KAWS EXPOSED: KAWS Artist Monograph, 1st edition, 1999: KAWS Exposed 1999: A highly collectible & much sought after photo-book of KAWS 1990’s street art - this publication uniquely stands out as the artist’s first monograph; featuring brilliant photos of 31 of KAWS’ ‘augmented’ posters – the original phone-booth and bus-shelter posters that would first put the artist on the map. Cover image: KAWS Running Chum. Softcover; offset printed artist book. 30+ pages. English. 6 x 9 inches. A fine impression in very good overall vintage condition. Unsigned from an edition of 2000. Published Colette Paris, 1999. More on KAWS: KAWS is an American graffiti artist and designer known for his toys, paintings, and prints. Born Brian Donnelly on November 4, 1974 in Jersey City, NJ, KAWS graduated with a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and went on to work in animation. “When your whole art is based on the lettering you choose, you kinda figure out what ones work together. I just liked the shapes of the k, a, w, s,” he explained of his moniker. Having started as a graffiti artist in New York in the early 1990s, KAWS began reworking advertisements in his distinctive style. Pop Art and culture permeate his cartoonish Companion series of figurines, which bear a resemblance to the works of Takashi Murakami. KAWS worked together with Nike in 2017 to produce an Air Jordan 4 shoe and has done multiple collaborations with the clothing brand Uniqlo, continuing to blur the boundaries between fine and commercial art. The artist is also known for his large scale public installations, such as 2019’s KAWS: Holiday which was installed in the Hong Kong harbor during Basel Hong Kong. In 2019, THE KAWS ALBUM (2005) sold at auction for a record $14.8 million, breaking his previous record of $2.7 million which was set in 2018. This work is a take on the Beatles' famous 1967 album cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but instead replaced with characters from The Simpsons with the artist's signature Xs drawn across their eyes and skull. After years in the industry, KAWS gained approval from his peers in the street art world and more recently prestige from the museum and gallery worlds. Today, his work can be found in the collections at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Rosenblum Collection in Paris. KAWS currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Related Categories: KAWS 1999...
Paper
KAWS Companion 2016 (KAWS Brown Companion)
By KAWS
Located in NEW YORK, NY
KAWS Brown Companion, 2016. New and sealed in its original packaging. This classic KAWS figurative sculpture was published by Medicom Japan in conjunction with the exhibition, KAWS: ...
Resin, Vinyl
What Party (Orange), KAWS
By KAWS
Located in Fairfield, CT
Artist: KAWS (1974) Title: What Party (Orange) Year: 2020 Medium: Silkscreen on Saunders Waterford paper Size: 22 x 22 inches Edition: 100, plus 20 proofs Condition: Excellent Inscri...
Screen
Original KAWS Signed Screenprint, 2020, URGE 8
By KAWS
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: KAWS Medium: Screenprint on Saunders Waterford 425gm HP hi-white Title: URGE 8 Portfolio: URGE Year: 2020 Edition: 173/250 Image Size: 11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Sheet Size: 17" x 12 1...
Screen
Original KAWS Signed Screenprint, 2020, URGE 1
By KAWS
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: KAWS Medium: Screenprint on Saunders Waterford 425gm HP hi-white Title: URGE 1 Portfolio: URGE Year: 2020 Edition: 173/250 Image Size: 11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Sheet Size: 17" x 12 1...
Screen
KAWS -- Blame Game II
By KAWS
Located in BRUCE, ACT
KAWS Blame Game II from the Blame Game portfolio,, 2014 Screen print on Saunders Waterford High White paper Hand signed lower right Numbered PP 2/5 Sheet size: 89 x 58.5 cm Frame s...
Screen
Vintage Kaws Cover Art 'Set of 3'
Located in Brooklyn, NY
A set of three rare KAWS illustrated publications: Made magazine 2003 featuring a KAWS illustrated cover band and ten or more interior photographs of the artists work additionally fe...
Paper
KAWS - Exposed, early (1999) softcover Franch monograph, limited edition of 2000
By KAWS
Located in New York, NY
KAWS Exposed, 1999 Early Illustrated softcover book with French folded flaps, published in Paris 8 4/5 × 6 1/5 inches Limited Edition of 2000 Published by Colette and printed by La P...
Offset
KAWS art toys have developed an avid audience in recent decades, and as in any robust collectible market, counterfeiters have followed the mania. Of course, you don’t have to worry about that on 1stDibs, where all our sellers are highly vetted.
From graffiti tagger to hypebeast obsession to auction hero — we chart the artist’s rise and his widening influence.
