KAWS Brown Flayed Companion 2016 (KAWS flayed brown companion)
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KAWSKAWS Brown Flayed Companion 2016 (KAWS flayed brown companion)2016
2016
About the Item
- Creator:KAWS (American)
- Creation Year:2016
- Dimensions:Height: 11 in (27.94 cm)Width: 5 in (12.7 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:NEW YORK, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU35436347332
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.
- KAWS Blush Companion 2016 (KAWS Flayed)By KAWSLocated in NEW YORK, NYKAWS Blush Flayed Companion 2016: New and sealed in its original packaging. Published by Medicom Japan in conjunction with the exhibition, KAWS: Where The E...Category
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- KAWS Companion 2016: complete set of 6By KAWSLocated in NEW YORK, NYKAWS Companion Complete Set of 6, 2016. Each new and sealed in original packaging. Published by Medicom Japan in conjunction with the exhibition, KAWS: Where The End Starts at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. These figurines have since sold out. Set includes 3 colors: Black, Brown and Grey, each in two variations (KAWS full body and Kaws Dissected...Category
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- KAWS SMALL LIE Brown (brown KAWS Companion)By KAWSLocated in NEW YORK, NYKAWS SMALL LIE Brown: Among KAWS’s signature “Companions,” Small Lie has the most childlike resonance. Clothed in overall shorts, the Pinocchio-inspire...Category
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- KAWS GONE complete set of 3 (KAWS gone companions)By KAWSLocated in NEW YORK, NYKAWS GONE: Complete set of 3 figures: new & unopened in their original packaging. A well-received work and variation of KAWS' large scale GONE sculpture - ...Category
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- KAWS CLEAN SLATE set of 2 works (KAWS clean slate black & grey)By KAWSLocated in NEW YORK, NYKAWS Clean Slate Set of 2 (Black & Grey), new & unopened in their original packaging. A well-received work and variation of KAWS' large scale Clean S...Category
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- KAWS - Set of 2 Companion Blush (Flayed) and Companion Blush- Painted Cast VinylBy KAWSLocated in Dallas, TXThis is a brand new, in its original packaged, never open. Perfect condition. KAWS's cartoonish style—including his best-known characters with X-ed out eyes—has its roots in his ea...Category
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- KAWS - Take Figure - Pink Version _BFF CompanionBy KAWSLocated in Dallas, TXThis is a brand new piece in perfect condition. Several months after releasing the KAWS Share Figure in February, the artist released his long anticipated KAWS Take Figure. The fig...Category
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MaterialsResin, Vinyl
- KAWS - Take Figure - Black Version _BFF CompanionBy KAWSLocated in Dallas, TXThis is a brand new piece in perfect condition. Several months after releasing the KAWS Share Figure in February, the artist released his long anticipated KAWS Take Figure. The fig...Category
2010s Pop Art Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsResin, Vinyl
- KAWS - Gone - Brown Version - collectible PopArtBy KAWSLocated in Dallas, TXKAWS Gone- Brown version New on its original packaging. Medium: Vinyl & Cast ResinCategory
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MaterialsResin, Vinyl
- KAWS - Clean Slate - Set of 2 - Grey and Black Version - brand newBy KAWSLocated in Dallas, TXKAWS Clean Slate - set of 2 (Grey & Black version), new & unopened in its original packaging. Sold Out versions after the artist's retrospect exhibiti...Category
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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.