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his segment profiles the artist known as KAWS forThe work can be thought of as an mer graffiti (tag) artist turned overarching brand, however it is also painter and designer of limited immediate and organic. This eneredition toys and clothing. Seg- getic immediacy can be felt in the ment also features some cool selection of work that he presents. clips of KAWS artistic vision and Kanye West’s latest album cover and AWS roots began as a graffiti billboards. artist in the early 1990’s and since “I just started simply through then he has built an identity that graffiti and drawing on my skatehad it’s genesis in guerilla imagery board and painting on walls and added to billboards and bus shelters. getting that small recognition,” said He converts familiar visuals into KAWS, known to his family as Brian affronting works of art. Through Donnelly. his company Original Fake he has released limited edition works. He HISTORY has also collaborated on design projects with Commes Des Garoons, Graduated from the school of Visual Marc Jacobs, and A Bathing Ape. In Arts in New York with a Bachelor the past recently worked with Kanye of Fine Arts in illustration in 1996. West to create the cover art for After graduation, KAWS briefly Kanye’s past album. This reworking worked for Disney as a freelance ani- of popular culture has grown KAWS mator painting backgrounds. into a multi-faceted, multi-pronged The Brooklyn based artist KAWS’ endeavor that has ventured into the who techniques acts as a sieve of realm of contemporary art. KAWS modern culture, filtering and re-con- situates himself at the crossroads textualizing the images and informa- of media and art; a vanguard in the tion that he comes in contact with new frontier of the 21st century daily. Process is all encompassing, artistic discourse. embracing popular culture and the visual landscape, which is familiar.
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I just started simply through graffiti and drawing on my skateboard and painting on walls and getting that small recognition,❞
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Original Fake Company. 2 KAWS 2011
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he Passing Through Companion at Harbour City Hong Kong
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KAWS + Bendy + Ad disruption piece
KAWS for Complex
KAWS + Bendy + Kanye West 808s album art
hanneling the commercialist attiCrecently, tude of Claes Oldenburg and, more Takashi Murakami, KAWS has
I believe all disciplines would benefit from feeding from each other, which would be a more natural and organic way of not only produced everything from x-marked sneak- making new work but experiencing it as ers for Nike to an album cover for a special well. In my mind, it is important is to have edition of Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak a creative vision that is applied to many (2008). To sell all the KAWS-mobilia, the different disciplines, activities, situations. artist opened a dazzling Masamichi Katayama–designed store in Tokyo in 2006 For this graffiti artist, painter, illustrator, called OriginalFake. sculptor, toymaker, and product designer. His street-born cartoonish graphics speCREATIONS cifically spermatozoa-shaped figures with New large paintings included in which fea- x-ed out eyes have achieved a sub cultural ture his usual cross-section of familiar cul- iconography. He has applied this KAWS tural icons painted with precise execution. signature to his street art, a clothing line, The resulting pieces feature the trademark heroically outsize toys and sculptures, and graphic quality inherent in his work. countless co-branding ventures with labels What first caught my attention about like A Bathing Ape and Marc Jacobs. KAWS is that he does not really find a strict boundary between art, design, and architecture.
ADVERTISING Although KAWS does not separate product from art or art from product, it was only a matter of time before the art world caught up with him. Not to follow the traditional route to fine-art career but instead chose to cut his own path.
The function within the tradition of pop art and revitalizing figuration with big and bold gestures of keen and playful sophistitepping away from graffiti along the cation, almost strategy to alter, transform terms writing his name on walls KAWS and permute cartoonish human and animal began altering ads. One of his graffiti mates features. In order to provide new imagesnow also turned successful pop artist gave human/animal hybrids that are vaguely KAWS this skeleton key which opened recognizable as being familiar; endearing up the new found drive where he began because of their supple features and yet unlocking the glass panel encasings of bus somewhat critical and bittersweet. Such is stop and phone booth ads. He stole the the case with the large-scale sculpture, a posters, added his own graphics to them in tall humanlike body with KAWS signature acrylic paint, his trade mark X-ed out eye’s skull, with crossed bones and crossed out and serpentine like cartoon character eyes-plus a defeated body posture.
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called “KAWS Bendy” and then surreptitiously carefully put them back.
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These hits were so skillfully executed brushstrokes are never apparent in a KAWS painting that often no one could distinguish the artist’s work from the original advertisement.
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humanlike body with KAWS signature skull, with crossed
bones and crossed out eyes-plus a defeated body posture❞
The KAWS x A Bathing Ape MILO
KAWS, Companion, 1999
TOYS Focus attention and enclose the composition around a portrait where lager notion which present in the foreground an antigravitational cluster of floating rocks that challenge normal perspective and obscure the almost unidentifiable and fragmented portrait of some infamous cartoon character.(Floating the Rumors) Adding to this complexity, the distinctive colour palette, packed with powerful contracts of bright and neon colours, contributes to taking influence from popular culture, focuses on experimenting and exploring, taking a single graphic to the minimum expression a concise sign that is still able to convey meaning and communicate, just like a logotype. The series and the variation of minimal elements in a composition, repeating a character over and over again, is part of pop art tradition. Through repetition Andy Warhol transformed the banal image of a Campbell’s soup can into a relevant one.
In 1999, KAWS made his first toy with Japanese company Bounty Hunter,a vinyl figure of Mickey Mouse with x-ed out eyes (as if Mickey just drank from a bottle marked POISON). Nigo, the tastemaker behind A Bathing Ape, asked KAWS to collaborate on a clothing line in 2001 and began collecting his pop paintings of cartoon characters like the Simpsons (The Kimpsons), the Smurfs (The Kurfs), and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Pinocchio & Jiminy Cricket. Two lovable cartoon characters with Kaws signature “X” on the hands and eyes
Simpsons they are such an instant watch. You could be in a different country and go, “D’oh!” and everybody would know exactly what you’re talking about. The thought is so amazing. 1999 First toy released, the Companion, in partnership with Japan’s BountyHunter label 2004 Bendys in six colourways, limited to 500. 2005 January: 5 Years Later Companions released in three colourways, each limited to 500. April: Kaws X A Bathing Ape figures of Milo
KAWS Vader Companion
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-marked sneakers for Nike
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Gray Dissected KAWS Companion
Storm Trooper Companion
Floating the Rumors 2009, Acrylic on canvas, 68 x 86 inches
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KAWS KAWSBOB Spongebob Square Pants
Reference: Lee, Chris (February 21, 2009 ). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 12 2011 from http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-kaws212009feb21,0,1190088.story
The Installation of KAWS Long Way Home at Honor Fraser (2/21/09-4/4/09). The kick it spot. Retrieved May 12 2011 from http://www.thekickitspot.com/2009/02/ kawsh/ Images of KAWS, Retrieved May 12 2011 from http://www.google.co.nz/search?cl ient=safari&rls=en&q=KAWS&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isc h&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1234&bih=620
All things KAWS, Retrieved May 12 2011 from http://fuckyeakaws.tumblr.com/
By Benedict Golo
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KAWS “Fat Albert”
Kurf (Tangle) 2009, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 inches: