MARKS THE SPOT
KAWS January 1, 2015 to March 18, 2015 HIGH MUSEUM OF ART ATLANTA
First published in the United Stated of America by Factor’s Workshop Publications, Inc. Stratford Dr (Riley Rd), Austin, TX 78746 www.factorsworkshop.com All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. X MARKS THE SPOT Copyright © 2014 Jacob Garcia Artwork © 1993-2013 KAWS, Inc. All rights reserved. For Factor’s Workshop Publications: Editor & Production: Jacob Garcia Printed in Spain 2010 2011 2012 2013 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010973048 ISBN: 978–683048659
Content s KAWS
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STREET AND ENVIRONMENT
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STUDIO AND INSTALLATION
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PRODUCTS AND COLLABORATIONS
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INDEX
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previous: WITHIN REASON 2010 Acrylic on canvas COMPANION: RESTING PLACE ( BROWN ) 2013 Vinyl
FOREWORD
JACOB GARCIA
X MARKS THE SPOT presents the most comprehensive survey to date of the genius, colorful and captivating work of Brian Donnelly, a.k.a. KAWS. This volume accompanies the presentation by the HIGH Museum of Art of the artist’s first solo museum exhibition. Both the exhibition and the publication collaborated with the artist every step of the way. It has been an amazing and unforgettable experience for all of us at HIGH to work with KAWS. I first heard of KAWS from a good friend of mine. He had an OriginalFake shirt. The graphic on the shirt was out of this world. It was something I had never seen before, it possessed style, humor, and most importantly imagination. It amazes me at how KAWS brings the same creative power to all of his projects, whether they may be graffiti, studio art, or design. It is inspiring how he ignores those distinctions and creates what he wants how he wants. The HIGH Museum of Art has a renowned history of giving artists their first museum exhibition, and has also shown a strong dedication to contemporary Pop art. This project fits precisely in those traditions.
NO FUTURE COMPANION 2008 Silver chrome coated metal
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KAWS Animated skulls with x-eyes. Cartoonish figures
the facade of the institution’s historic building and 60
dressed in strange button-up britches. Acid-trip
paintings and sculptures within the museum, some
versions of characters from Spongebob Squarepants
intermingled with historic work, showing KAWS
and The Simpsons. Jagged planes of color like a neon
reacting to other eras of art history. On October 25,
sign being smashed into a plate-glass window. The
he opened the exhibition “UPS AND DOWNS” at the
work of the artist KAWS, who has stealthily moved
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. In November
from mass-producing commercial objects to creating
the artist will have one of the debut shows at Parisian
unique sculptures, paintings, and installations for
powerhouse Emmanuel Perrotin’s new New York City
some of the most prestigious museums in the world,
gallery, which runs at the same time as an exhibition
is like a virus. Once you’ve noticed his work, you see it
at Mary Boone Gallery in Chelsea.
everywhere. It will consume you. But KAWS’ path is altogether different than his You’re as likely to encounter a fragment of KAWS’
artistic progenitors. He got his start outside the art
universe in a Tokyo mall as you are on the streets
world, or parallel to it, and has moved into its center
of New York or in the aisles of the Art Basel Miami
as few “outsiders” have succeeded in doing during
Beach art fair. The artist puts his mark on vinyl toys,
the advent of graffiti and street art from the 1980s
skateboard decks, magazine fashion spreads, and
onward. While artists who began on the street like
album covers with collaborators like Kanye West,
Shepard Fairey and Banksy have achieved high prices
The Clipse, and Pharrell Williams.
at galleries and auctions, and routinely make headlines for their latest projects, they haven’t been adopted as
This cultural omnipresence makes the artist a worthy
KAWS has been into an art world that’s notoriously
millennial successor to Pop art juggernauts like Andy
elitist and distrustful of populism.
Warhol and Keith Haring. So what did KAWS do right? This cultural omnipresence makes the artist a worthy
Born Brian Donnelly in 1974 in Jersey City, New
millennial successor to Pop art juggernauts like Andy
Jersey, Donnelly broke into the graffiti scene in the
Warhol and Keith Haring. In many ways, KAWS is
early ‘90s and started tagging billboards with his nom
already at home in the museums and galleries at the
de guerre, which he says has no particular meaning—
heart of the art world.
“It’s just letters that I liked…I felt like they always work and function nicely with each other,” he told
On October 11, the artist opened a series of projects
Interview Magazine. Donnelly then started painting
at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts for
on advertisements, both as a way to set himself
a show curated by director Harry Philbrick called
apart from other graffiti writers and to comment
“KAWS @ PAFA,” featuring a sculpture mounted on
on the ads, creating a forced collaboration with the
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ads’ photographers and using them as a parasite—another way to communicate his name to an audience wider than walls or galleries. KAWS attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1993 to ’96. But that didn’t stop him from tagging—his network of imagery spread over New York and around the globe, catching the notice of commercial creatives. One of those was photographer David Sims, who had created some of the very ads KAWS painted over. Sims invited the artist to London, made prints of his work, and helped him begin to paint over actual photographs rather than reproductions. The experiments led him to commissions for magazines like Complex, Vogue, and Warhol’s own Interview. In the late 1990s, KAWS began traveling to Japan, where he quickly fell in with a new set of creative peers. “I met these guys around my age who were just killing it…To me that was where it was happening,” he has said. In 1999, the artist collaborated with the Japanese company Bounty Hunter to produce his first toy in 1999, a vinyl Mickey Mouse with x-eyes. Donnelly went on to work with the iconic streetwear brand A Bathing Ape to design clothing. What may surprise those viewers who have only had a glancing brush with KAWS’ work or seen his products is that he possesses a sensitive understanding of visual culture. “Brian has a serious connection to the history of art in the past 40 years,” says curator Michael Rooks, who organized an exhibition of the artist at the High Museum (“KAWS: DOWN TIME,” February 18 to July 29, 2012) in Georgia. KAWS cites the Swedish-American sculptor Claes Oldenburg as one of his favorite artists. Oldenburg, an early participant in Pop art, made his name by creating “soft” sculptures of everyday objects like telephones, hamburgers, and cake slices blown up to a giant scale. Donnelly had those in mind when he created his toys: “Instead of making one monumental piece I made a thousand eight-inch pieces,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. The artist considers the toys to be miniature living sculptures. KAWS has been compared to Warhol for his factory-like output, but in fact he’s more like Keith Haring, who also made his name by being a vandal, doodling in the black rectangles left behind by torn-down subway ads. As Haring became more successful, he began creating legal murals and moved from the streets into gallery and museum spaces, launching his own store, the Pop Shop, in the process. Donnelly has said that he gave up tagging a decade ago, and he launched Original Fake as a retail outlet, and eventually an original
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clothing brand (which he shut down in January of this year), in Tokyo in 2006. Donnelly now makes his primary residence indoors. Artists make the transition from rebels into participants in the art world through a network of gatekeepers—curators, gallery directors, and institutions. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Pop was absorbed into the canon of art history. Today, through a generation of curators who have grown up with Pop art, street art is making this same transition. It is increasingly being seen not as an outsider strain but as a movement worth incorporating into the art historical narrative, though that may run counter to some of its ideals. In 2010, KAWS had his first show at Emmanuel Perrotin’s Galerie Perrotin (which still represents the artist) in Paris, followed by a large exhibition in 2011 at the Aldrich Museum of Fine Art in Connecticut, an important supporter of emerging artists. Harry Philbrick, the curator of KAWS’ current exhibition in Philadelphia, brings up Warhol as a reference point during a conversation about KAWS, but draws a sharp line between the two artists. “Warhol was a little bit more distanced from the popular culture he was appropriating in his work; Brian is more of it and with it,” he says. This distinction allows KAWS to have a different relationship with his viewers, as well—a more mutually respectful, two-way exchange than Warhol’s flashbulb-illuminated pose as a bohemian celebrity allowed. Where Warhol used his screen-printed portraits, Polaroids, and wry reproductions of electric chairs and car crashes to speak to others on his own cultural strata—movie stars, collectors, proteges—letting them in on the joke of the shallow mass media, KAWS is a Robin Hood who takes the side of his audience, freeing fragments of popular icons from their commercial contexts and letting them float freely. The world has so much more imagery now than it did during Warhol’s day, with whole new universes of digital media and the 24-hour deluge of news cycles and social networks, where we’re all micro-famous for far more than 15 minutes. Brian Donnelly gives us a way to react to that flood. He is the Warhol of his generation. “For a lot of people [Donnelly’s] work is important because it helps give them ownership over the contemporary visual lexicon,” Philbrick said. “So much imagery that we see every day is controlled by corporations. KAWS takes that and makes it his own. In so doing, it’s powerful and even in a way liberating for people to see that
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happen.” By working through mass media, pirating it as
has forsaken some of the outsider status that Banksy still
he did advertisements earlier in his career, KAWS creates a
possesses. The anonymous artist has avoided some of the
movement on a scale unavailable to artists in the past. “I
stigma of commodification by remaining rebellious.
love how he subverts everyday brands to an extent where every brand would love to get pregnant by his art!” says
“Artists like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and
Lee Lodge, who asked KAWS to take on MTV’s iconic
Jenny Holzer were able to speak to a bigger public, and
Moonman and make it his own for the 2013 Video Music
go beyond the visual tricks and aesthetics of the street to
Awards. “Art for me is about connection, provocation,
create bodies of work that worked best in a gallery,” street
seduction. He hits every button.”
art critic and founder of the art blogazine Hyperallergic, Hrag Vartanian, wrote to Complex in an email. “The
What may set KAWS apart from artists like REAS (Todd
question is whether KAWS will be able to make the leap.”
James) and Barry McGee, who both came up through
Though KAWS’ imagery is undeniable, there remains
street art and have since entered the art world, is
the possibility that his art world success is ephemeral. If
his accessibility. “I think he’s very sincere, very much
Donnelly continues to evolve as he has, there is no doubt
connected to being human,” curator Michael Rooks
that his success will continue for many years.
explained. Where McGee is insular, or Banksy cynical and satirical (choosing to remain anonymous and limit his interventions to rare occasions), KAWS makes work that is ecstatic, open, and extroverted, even if the artist himself doesn’t have such a public persona. “There’s an emotional layer to Brian’s work that emerges when you spend time with it,” Rooks said. A genuine connection is birthed. Though he had previously told Interview, “no matter how things go in the gallery world, I’m still going to want to make product,” KAWS has tapered off creating massmarket commercial products and closed OriginalFake earlier this year, perhaps to put more focus on his studio, rather than factory work. That quote betrays two impulses: one, to keep gaining art world credibility, and two, to appeal to as many fans as possible, spreading the viral KAWS aesthetic across the world. Such is Donnelly’s problem: he’s already succeeding in the art world, but he will have to decide if he wants to pursue that success, at the risk of alienating some of his earlier fans. “When graffiti isn’t criminal, it loses most of its innocence,” Banksy recently told the Village Voice, previous spread: KAWS (ORIGINALFAKE ) COMPANION 2006 Vinyl
remarking on his month-long project to blanket New York with new work. “As soon as you profit from an image you’ve put on the street, it magically transforms that piece into advertising.” KAWS has created a successful career for himself by leveraging his street work into lucrative gallery
UNTITLED 2000–2001 Acrylic paint on photograph
shows that trade on the same imagery, but by doing so, he
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STREET AND ENVIRONMENT
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opposite: KAWS (THE CAPTAIN ) 1995 Paint Marker on existing magazine advertisement UNTITLED (CK BE ) 1997 Acrylic on existing advertising poster Bus shelter intervention
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opposite: UNTITLED ( KRUSTY ) 2002 Acrylic on paper Phone booth intervention UNTITLED 1999 Silkscreen, edition of 50, 9 APs
UNTITLED (CHANEL, YELLOW ) 2007 Acrylic on existing Andy Warhol opposite: UNTITLED 1999 Silkscreen, edition of 50, 9 APs 20
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ZALMAN GALLERY (INSTALLATION VIEW) New York
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STUDIO AND INSTALLATION
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previous spread: KAWSBOB 3 2007 Acrylic on canvas KURFS ( PAPA) 2007 Acrylic on canvas
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I’M SURE 2008 Acrylic on canvas
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AGAIN AND AGAIN 2008 Acrylic on canvas 28
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opposite: CHUM ( RED) 2009 Painted on fiberglass Series of 6 unique colors PERMANENT THIRTY THREE 2008 Painted bronze Series of 33 unique colors 31
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KIMPSONS #1 2004 Acrylic on canvas
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previous spread: KIMPSONS #2 2004 Acrylic on canvas THE KAWS ALBUM 2005 Acrylic on canvas
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THE UNDERGROUND Have you heard of Kaws? Cover of New York Magazine,
Solo exhib it ions include OriginalFake at the Bape Gallery in
posted in Times Square, featured on CBS Sunday Morning,
Tokyo (2003) where his sculpture “Wonderful World” sold
globa lly coll ected, subverting americ an pop-icons KAWS…
for an estimated $400,000.
Kaws, known originally as Brian Donnelly from Jersey
KAWS has been perio dic ally showing both paintings and
City, New Jersey, began his career as a graff iti artist. He
produ cts at Colette in Paris since 1999.
tagged first in Jersey and, upon moving to New York where he would attend art school in the 1990’s, started
His work is included in the trave ling exhib it ion Beautiful
subverting imagery on advert isem ents and billb oards. As
Losers, which started at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art
he prog ressed he focused on cert ain areas and outlets.
Center and will be trave ling through 2009 througho ut
He became part ial to bus shelters and phone booth
North America and Europe.
advert isem ents. Kaws said of this “I started gett ing into bombing on a more serio us level, trying to cover larger
KAWS has become an import ant figure in the movem ent
areas of Jersey and Manhattan, especially Soho.” At first
of underg round graff iti culture into the mains tream of
his altered imagery endured, lasting often many months
gallery art. He had plenty of support along the way.
but as the now famous x-ed out eyes of Kaws’ gained notor ie ty the public work became swiftly sought after. Kaws designed and prod uced a line of limited edit ion toys in the late 90’s that became an instant global smash amongst the art toy-collecting community, part icularly in Japan where the genre is deeply respected and incredib ly popular. His toys can sell for thousands of dollars. Kaws has collabo rated with Original fake, Medicom toy, Nigo for A Bathing Ape, Jun “Jonio” Takahashi for Undercover, Burton snowb oards, Nike, Vans, Complex and now Comme des Garçons. Kaws is now known for re-creating iconic images such as the Smurfs, the Simpsons (titled, the Kimpsons), Mickey Mouse, the Michelin Man and recently designed a cover for the Kanye West 808s & Heartbreak album that gar nered a lot of buzz. Through all of his projects, KAWS has successfully blurred the line between fine art and mass-produced merchand ise. He uses his produ cts to allow his imagery to infilt rate a
COMPANION PASSING THROUGH 2011 Ink on paper
larger audie nce than that of the fine art world. The artist is currently an active memb er in both the comm ercial and fine art communities.
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PRODUCTS AND COLLABORATIONS
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KAWS ( DISSECTED ) COMPANION 2008 Painted Fiberglass
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HENNY 2011 Limited edition bottle of V.S. Cognac Edition of 420,000
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KANYE WEST 808S & HEARTBREAK 2008 Printed paper Special edition LP poster Roc–A–Fella Records 45
MODERN POP New York celebrity-artist-brand-collector-entrepreneur
Several other paintings, incongruously, are in black
and possible part-time superhero KAWS cites almost
on black, lending a Rothko Chapel-like tragic gloom
everyone in pop and abstract art as having contrib-
to the irrepressible animated sponge. Companion
uted a stylistic inspiration for his collection Imaginary
(ORIGINALFAKE), from 2011, is an eight-foot Mickey
Friends, with Keith Haring’s colourful shape-characters
Mouse-like sculpture half cut away, like an anatomical
and Andy Warhol’s use of repetition.
model, to reveal carefully shaped muscles and organs. Of course, one does not expect to find proper anatomy
What is clearly evident in his work is a great sense of
within an imaginary, walking, talking, sexually
both energy and texture, the latter provided by clever
ambiguous mouse, which makes the sculpture amusing.
use of coloured shapes to create a sense of depth and
It is a smaller cousin of the artist’s monumental
layering. His work often has the feel of an explosion
Companion (Passing Through), 2010, recently on view
frozen in one still frame, for example his fight scene
in New York, Atlanta and Connecticut.
Cut Through The City, or the weightlessness of No Guarantees. KAWS: not modest (or needs to tell his publicist to tone it down a bit), but undoubtedly very talented. He proudly expresses his skills. KAWS belongs to a generation of street artists shaped by the comparative anarchy of pre-Giuliani New York, who have benefited from the radical-chic patronage of Jeffrey Deitch. His work has been included in the canon-defining exhibitions Beautiful Losers and Art in the Streets. Having begun as a youthful graffiti tagger in Jersey City, he has since graduated to the more socially constructive and better-paying vocation of gallery artist, showing at the Los Angeles gallery of former model Honor Fraser (along with a couple of other artists recently featured in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s Focus series). Within the field of street art, KAWS’s work, honed by years spent in Japan, belongs to the more Pop-imagistic stream informed by the mass media, as opposed to the more textual-typographic stream grounded in tagging. At the Modern, he shows several paintings on the muse of SpongeBob SquarePants, fragments of whose face are tightly enclosed by the boundaries of the
COMPLEX October/November 2009 Cover, paper
canvas. Black Spots (2011), a grid of 21 tondo (circular) paintings, can be read in linear or random order, like the manic sequencing of children’s animation itself.
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CANDICE SWANEPOEL Winter 2013 Photography by Matt Jones
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opposite: KAWS MOONMAN 2013 60 foot inflatable MTV VMA stage KAWS MOONMAN 2013 Silver chrome coated metal
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KAWS COMPANION 2012 Full size balloon Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade 50
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Index WITHIN REASON 2010 Acrylic on canvas Tondo, 40 x 40 inches
UNTITLED 1999 Silkscreen, edition of 50, 9 APs 28 x 21 inches
COMPANION: RESTING PLACE ( BROWN ) 2013 Vinyl 9 x 9 x 12 inches
KAWSBOB 3 2007 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 96 inches
NO FUTURE COMPANION 2008 Silver chrome coated metal 12 x 8 x 8 inches KAWS (ORIGINALFAKE ) COMPANION 2006 Vinyl 14 x 6 x 4 inches UNTITLED 2000–2001 Acrylic paint on photograph 16 x 12 inches KAWS (THE CAPTAIN ) 1995 Paint Marker on existing magazine advertisement 13 x 10 inches UNTITLED (CK BE ) 1997 Acrylic on existing advertising poster Bus shelter intervention 50 x 26 in New York UNTITLED ( KRUSTY ) 2002 Acrylic on paper Phone booth intervention 50 x 26 inches New York UNTITLED 1999 Silkscreen, edition of 50, 9 APs 28 x 21 inches UNTITLED (CHANEL, YELLOW ) 2007 Acrylic on existing Andy Warhol 68 x 48 inches
KAWS ( DISSECTED ) COMPANION 2008 Painted Fiberglass 120 x 47 ½ x 36 inches HENNY 2011 Limited edition bottle of V.S. Cognac Edition of 420,000
KURFS ( PAPA) 2007 Acrylic on canvas 68 x 86 inches
KANYE WEST 808S & HEARTBREAK 2008 Printed paper Special edition LP poster Roc–A–Fella Records 24 x 12 inches
I’M SURE 2008 Acrylic on canvas 68 x 68 inches
COMPLEX October/November 2009 Cover, paper 11 x 9 inches
AGAIN AND AGAIN 2008 Acrylic on canvas 68 x 68 inches CHUM ( RED) 2009 Painted on fiberglass Series of 6 unique colors 90 x 54 x 30 inches PERMANENT THIRTY THREE 2008 Painted bronze Series of 33 unique colors 11 x 6 x 9 inches KIMPSONS #1 2004 Acrylic on canvas 108 x 96 inches
CANDICE SWANEPOEL Winter 2013 Photography by Matt Jones KAWS MOONMAN 2013 60 foot inflatable MTV VMA stage Barclays Center Brooklyn KAWS MOONMAN 2013 Silver chrome coated metal 13 x 5 inches KAWS COMPANION 2012 Full size balloon Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade 40 x 34 x 30 feet
KIMPSONS #2 2004 Acrylic on canvas 80 x 80 inches
COMPANION: RESTING PLACE ( BLACK ) 2013 Vinyl 9 x 9 x 12 inches
THE KAWS ALBUM 2005 Acrylic on canvas 40 x 40 inches COMPANION PASSING THROUGH 2011 Ink on paper 6 x 12 inches
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