KAWSKAWS 2009 exhibition announcement2009
2009
About the Item
- Creator:KAWS (American)
- Creation Year:2009
- Dimensions:Height: 4 in (10.16 cm)Width: 5.5 in (13.97 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:NEW YORK, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU354311599352
KAWS
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’s oeuvre encompasses art toys, sculptures and colorful 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 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 prints, sculptures and mixed media works on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: New York, NY
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 2 days of delivery.
- Milton Glaser San Diego Jazz Festival 1983 (Milton Glaser posters)By Milton GlaserLocated in NEW YORK, NY1980s Milton Glaser Poster Art: San Diego Jazz Festival: Vintage original Milton Glaser poster c.1983. Designed by Milton Glaser on the occasion of the San Diego Jazz Festival, a Pacific Coast event depicted with a suit-and-sandal clad bear at dusk. Several favorite Glaserisms show up here: the swirling contours, the loose cross-hatching and the saxophone. Offset lithograph poster in colors. 24x36 inches. Very good overall vintage condition with the exception of perhaps some minor signs of handling. A suit-and-sandal bear heralds this Pacific Coast event with a serenade with a beautiful sunset. Several favorite Glaserisms show up here: the swirling contours, the loose cross-hatching and the sax. Literature: Milton Glaser Posters Legendary graphic designer, illustrator, and art director Milton Glaser created some of the most recognizable iconography in America today —including the iconic I ♥ N Y logo —and countless posters and ad campaigns. Glaser changed the face of commercial art in the 1960s and ’70s, breaking with the conventions of modernism and drawing inspiration from a wide variety of art-historical and pop-cultural sources, from Art Nouveau to comic illustration...Category
1980s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset
- Tomi Ungerer Nude Gun (Tomi Ungerer underground sketchbook)By Tomi UngererLocated in NEW YORK, NYTomi Ungerer Nude Gun: a selection from Underground Sketchbook: First printing, 1965. Medium: Vintage poster. Dimensions: 23 in. x 29 in. (58.42 cm x 73.66 cm). Very good overall vi...Category
1960s Pop Art Nude Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset
- Milton Glaser Juilliard 1990 (Milton Glaser posters)By Milton GlaserLocated in NEW YORK, NY1990s Milton Glaser Poster Art: Juilliard: Vintage original Milton Glaser poster c.1990. Designed by Milton Glaser on the occasion of Juilliard School of Music at New York’s at the Lincoln Center. Beginning in 1987, the audio-tape manufacturer TDK underwrote a series of annual posters for Juilliard at New York’s Lincoln Center. Glaser has designed all the posters. Here, in the fourth, the lightning power of music brings a carefully-painted Dutch floral still life...Category
1980s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset
- Milton Glaser Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts (Milton Glaser posters)By Milton GlaserLocated in NEW YORK, NY1980s Milton Glaser Poster Art: Milton Glaser Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College: Vintage original Milton Glaser poster c.1984. Designed by Milton Glaser on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College. In this piece Glaser creates music and dance incarnate: A colorful figure appears headless, its torso formed...Category
1980s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset
- Rare original Raymond Pettibon record cover art set of 4 (Pettibon black flag)By Raymond PettibonLocated in NEW YORK, NYRare original 1980s Raymond Pettibon record cover art: Set of 4 individual Raymond Pettibon illustrated record albums accompanied by their orig...Category
1980s Pop Art Prints and Multiples
MaterialsOffset, Lithograph
- Raymond Pettibon illustrated Punk flyer 1996 (Raymond Pettibon ounk)By Raymond PettibonLocated in NEW YORK, NYRaymond Pettibon illustrated Punk flyer 1996: Super rare 1996 punk flyer illustrated by Raymond Pettibon for a Los Angeles, CA venue where Pettibon performed among friends (Pettibon presented as a performer on mid lower right). Imagery references Charles Manson - a revolving character of Pettibon´s since the early 1980s. Here Pettibon presents Manson being worshiped by a punk rocker with a mohawk under the shadow of the text, Helter Skelter - a Manson cult movement named after the famous Beatles White album song of the same name. Medium: Offset printed Punk flyer. Dimensions: 8.5 x 11 inches. Very good overall vintage condition. Unsigned from an edition of unknown. Further History: Between the years 1978 and 1986 Raymond Pettibon (aka, Raymond Pettibon; St. Pettibone) produced a now historic amassment of graphic works for seminal Southern California punk bands such as Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys...Category
1990s Pop Art Nude Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset
- TAKASHI MURAKAMI - MIYABI: KŌRIN Pop Art. Japanese Traditional FlowersBy Takashi MurakamiLocated in Madrid, MadridMIYABI: KŌRIN ( KŌRIN: COURTLY ELEGANCE 2020) Date of creation: 2020 Medium: Offset print with cold stamp and high gloss varnish on paper Edition number: 200/300 Size: 72 × 76,25 cm ...Category
2010s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsPaper, Varnish, Lithograph, Offset
- TAKASHI MURAKAMI: DAZZLING CIRCUS Flowers & Skulls Japanese Pop Art RedBy Takashi MurakamiLocated in Madrid, MadridDAZZLING CIRCUS: EMBRACE PEACE AND DARKNESS WITHIN THY HEART Date of creation: 2016 Medium: Offset lithograph with silver Edition: 300 Size: 68.9 × 53 cm Condition: In mint condition...Category
2010s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsVarnish, Lithograph, Offset
- Four Hearts, 1971, after Jim DineBy Jim DineLocated in Fairfield, CTArtist: After Jim Dine (1935) Title: Four Hearts, exhibition poster Year: 1971 Medium: Lithograph on Arches paper Size: 30.75 x 22 inches Condition: Excellent Inscription: Signed by ...Category
1970s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset
- Larry Rivers Lithograph "For Adults Only I" Corseted Nude FemaleBy Larry RiversLocated in Detroit, MISALE ONE WEEK ONLY "For Adults Only I" is an exquisite offset lithograph print with colors of an alluring corseted and stockinged nude female in a confrontational pose filling the f...Category
1970s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset
- Portrait with Jack Kerouac (Basquiat's final exhibition)By Jean-Michel BasquiatLocated in New York, NYJean-Michel Basquiat Portrait with Jack Kerouac (Basquiat's final exhibition), 1988 Offset Lithograph for 1988 Vrej Baghoomian exhibition. Historic. Thankful...Category
1980s Pop Art Portrait Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset
- Early 1970s poster from Annely Juda Gallery, London (hand signed by Christo)By Christo and Jeanne-ClaudeLocated in New York, NYChristo and Jeanne-Claude Christo (Hand Signed by Christo), 1971 Offset lithograph Hand signed in pencil by the artist on the lower right front Published by Annely Juda Gallery, Lond...Category
1970s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsOffset, Lithograph
Recently Viewed
View AllRead More
How to Spot a Fake KAWS Figure
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.
KAWS Is Having a Major Effect on Popular Culture, Whether on the Street or in Museums
From graffiti tagger to hypebeast obsession to auction hero — we chart the artist’s rise and his widening influence.