KAWS One (early KAWS artist book)
View Similar Items
KAWSKAWS One (early KAWS artist book)2001
2001
About the Item
- Creator:KAWS (American)
- Creation Year:2001
- Dimensions:Height: 8.4 in (21.34 cm)Width: 6.3 in (16.01 cm)Depth: 0.2 in (5.08 mm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:NEW YORK, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU35435516592
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.
- Basquiat Works on Paper CatalogBy after Jean-Michel BasquiatLocated in NEW YORK, NYBasquiat Réunion des Musées Nationaux exhibition catalog, 1997: A superbly composed & elaborate catalog of Basquiat drawings and works on paper published in 1997 by Réunion des Musées Nationaux, France. Features 85 beautifully illustrated color reproductions plus photos around the artist. Introduction by Dina Vierny and foreword by renowned Basquiat dealer, Enrico Navara. Soft cover. 9 x 11 inches. A fine impression in very good overall condition. Rare as such. Published by Réunion des Musées Nationaux (1997). Text by Bernard Blistène "The crown, the seal and the copyright - Notes on a black face soap". Biography and bibliography. (French-English) Jean-Michel Basquiat’s dramatic life and iconic paintings—which variously feature obsessive scribbling, enigmatic symbols and diagrams, and iconography including skulls, masks, and the artist’s trademark crown—make him one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. The self-taught painter embraced graffiti before committing to a studio practice. He found a mentor and friend in Andy Warhol, who helped the young artist navigate the 1980s New York art world. Across his oeuvre, Basquiat drew on his own Caribbean heritage; a convergence of African American, African, and Aztec cultural histories; classical themes; and pop cultural figures including athletes and musicians. The immediacy and intellectual depth of his paintings won him widespread acclaim both before and after his untimely death at the age of 27. Basquiat’s paintings now belong in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. In 2017, Basquiat’s Untitled (1982) notched $110.5 million at auction and became the most expensive artwork by an American artist to ever be sold. Related Categories: Basquiat ephemera. Basquiat Robert Miller gallery. Vintage Basquiat. Basquiat catalog...Category
1980s Pop Art Prints and Multiples
MaterialsPaper
- Takashi Murakami record art 2018 (Takashi Murakami Kanye West)By Takashi MurakamiLocated in NEW YORK, NYTakashi Murakami Record Art 2018 (Takashi Murakami Kanye West Kid Cudi): This Takashi Murakami designed cover & record album is for Kids See Gh...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsPaper, Offset
$100 Sale Price20% Off - Basquiat Works on Paper Catalog, Buenos AiresBy after Jean-Michel BasquiatLocated in NEW YORK, NYJean-Michel Basquiat, Works on Paper: rare vintage catalog to the 1997 exhibit at the Museu Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Illustrat...Category
1980s Pop Art Prints and Multiples
MaterialsPaper, Offset
$394 Sale Price20% Off - Basquiat Marseille exhibition catalog 1992By after Jean-Michel BasquiatLocated in NEW YORK, NYJean-Michel Basquiat France 1992: Original Exhibition Catalog, for Jean-Michel Basquiat – A Retrospective; Musée Cantini, Marseille, France, 1992. Illustrated cover with flaps, 192 ...Category
1980s Pop Art Prints and Multiples
MaterialsPaper
- Basquiat Marseille exhibition catalog 1992By after Jean-Michel BasquiatLocated in NEW YORK, NYJean-Michel Basquiat France 1992: Original Exhibition Catalog, for Jean-Michel Basquiat – A Retrospective; Musée Cantini, Marseille, France, 1992. Illustrated cover with flaps, 192 ...Category
1980s Pop Art Prints and Multiples
MaterialsPaper
- Keith Haring Crack Down! 1986 (vintage program)By Keith HaringLocated in NEW YORK, NYKeith Haring crack down! 1986: Vintage original 1986 Keith Haring illustrated Crack Down! benefit program. This folding pamphlet was designed & illustrated by Keith Haring (along with a poster of same), for the 1986 "Crackdown on Crack" concert at New York City’s world...Category
1980s Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsPaper, Lithograph
$280 Sale Price20% Off
- Kunsthalle Bern ("Hopeless", Roy Lichtenstein) – Original Exhibition PosterBy Roy LichtensteinLocated in Zurich, CHOriginal Swiss Vintage Exhibition Poster (screenprint by Albin Uldry, Bern) on the occasion of Lichtenstein's show 1968 at the Kunsthalle Bern, curated...Category
Mid-20th Century Pop Art Figurative Prints
MaterialsPaper
- Pink Pop Art "In the Sun", 1960sLocated in Washington, DCPsychedelic silkscreen work by Noche Crist (1909- 2004). Self printed by the artist. Wonderful work and one of only two remaining from her estate. Image is from her "In the Sun" ser...Category
1960s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsPaper
- Henry at tableBy David HockneyLocated in Tallinn, EELithograph on Arches wove paper. 75 × 105,8 cm. (29 ½ × 41 ⅝ in.) Signed and dated. One of 96 numbered prints from a total edition of 123. Los Angeles, Gemini G.E.L., 1976 (with the ...Category
1970s Pop Art Portrait Prints
MaterialsArchival Paper, Lithograph
Price Upon Request - Cindy (Smile)By Chuck CloseLocated in Tallinn, EECindy (Smile) Signed Chuck Close, dated 2013 and inscribed T.P. (in the lower margin) Archival watercolor pigment print on Hahnemühle rag paper 190.5 by ...Category
2010s Pop Art Portrait Prints
MaterialsArchival Pigment, Rag Paper
Price Upon Request - Study for Bedroom Blonde with Lavender WallpaperBy Tom WesselmannLocated in Ljubljana, SIStudy for Bedroom Blonde with Lavender Wallpaper. Original color pencil and liquitex on Ragboard, 1985. Tom Wesselmann is one of the biggest Americ...Category
1980s Pop Art Nude Prints
MaterialsRag Paper, Color Pencil
Price Upon Request - Blue SocksBy Tom WesselmannLocated in Ljubljana, SIBlue Socks. Original color liquitex on Ragboard, 1968. Tom Wesselmann is one of the biggest American pop artists today. Even he did not like being labeled a pop artist, it is hard to...Category
1960s Pop Art Nude Prints
MaterialsAcrylic, Rag Paper
Price Upon Request
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.