KAWS: Here's What You Didn't Know

KAWS: Here's What You Didn't Know

Brian Donnelly, known professionally as KAWS, is an American artist and designer. His work includes repeated use of cast of figurative characters and motifs, some dating back to the beginning of his career in the 1990s. Born and raised in New Jersey, Donnelly moved to New York in the 90s and illegal graffiti was the first step of KAWS becoming what it is as he learnt this craft. An animator by day and graffiti artist by night, KAWS started subvertising billboards, bus shelters and phone booths all across New York until he started creating sculptures, acrylic paintings and eventually introduced his iconic KAWS Companion that has cemented itself as a must-have collectible and has impacted pop-culture in endless ways.

KAWS sculptures range in size from a few inches to 10 metres tall. His influences come from traditional high art painters like Gerhard Richer, Claes Oldenburg and Chuck Close – he has been compared to the likes of Andy Warhol for his cross-market appeal and ability to blur lines between commercial and fine art.

 

His well-known pieces are KAWS Companion, BFF and Chum: all pieces are characterized by an emphasis of colour and line, distinctive graphics such as repeated ‘X’s on the hands, nose, eyes and ears. All the figures are an appropriation of pop culture icons like Mickey Mouse and Michelin Man. His characters are generally depicted in a shy and/or powerless pose, often with hands obscuring their face.

KAWS, along with other artists, emerged to the spotlight and opportunities by publishing issues with independent magazines in 2007, solidifying themselves as iconic examples of contemporary art world figures. Throughout his career, KAWS has showed that the border between fashion and art doesn’t exist. He has collaborated with brands such as Dior, Supreme and Hennessey.  His work is exhibited in galleries, museums and avidly collected by celebrities, influencers and fellow creators/artists.  The KAWS Companion figure was so popular that is replaced the long-standing moon man trophies for the 2013 MTV VMA Awards and is in the collections of Travis Scott, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber and Kanye West.

Interestingly, KAWS’s work has not always been accepted in the traditional art space. The director of the Brooklyn Museum, Anne Pastemak, claims that KAWS “makes the art world feel uncomfortable” and doesn’t feel KAWS follows the traditional hierarchies within the traditional art world. She is not the first to feel that KAW’s work is overhyped and ‘conceptually bankrupt’.

Whatever one might say, it is clear that KAWS has been able to tap into different principles of art within fashion, corporate and fine art and make a lasting impact. In 2017, KAWS collaborated with the Jordan Brand and released a KAWS X Air Jordan 4 limited sneaker – it was deemed a piece of sneaker history as “the biggest sneaker release in history”.

KAWS is the correlation of being in between what was formerly and what is new and now in the hierarchy of art. He has removed the tension between artists, collectors and the general public and has turned it into one connection of human experience.

Back to blog