For all the work New Jersey-born illustrator, sculptor, and graffiti writer KAWS has put into the world, some people have trouble calling him an artist—he’s been made out as more of an adapter, using his environment and the culture surrounding him as the inspiration and material for his work. A prime example of this is his recently announced redesign of the classic MTV Video Music Award Moonman statue for this year’s awards. But this dynamic, an interplay that also straddles art and commerce, has shifted through the years as the artist as defined his style. With that in mind, here is The Art Evolution of KAWS throughout the years.
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For all the work New Jersey-born illustrator, sculptor, and graffiti writer KAWS has put into the world, some people have trouble calling him an artist—he’s been made out as more of an adapter, using his environment and the culture surrounding him as the inspiration and material for his work. A prime example of this is his recently announced redesign of the classic MTV Video Music Award Moonman statue for this year’s awards. But this dynamic, an interplay that also straddles art and commerce, has shifted through the years as the artist as defined his style. With that in mind, here is The Art Evolution of KAWS throughout the years.
RELATED: 15 Street Art Terms You Should Know
RELATED: The Best Murals of 2013
1. The Formative Years
Years: 1991 - 1995
Notable works: Trains, Walls, Bombs, and Tags
KAWS, in a 1995 interview from T. DEE's Under Cover Magazine, tells the magazine's founder that he'd been writing graffiti in a three-block radius around his Jersey City, N.J. home since 7th or 8th grade. This, he said, was in grammar school, around the year 1991. The first billboard he hit was in 1993, a year after he graduated high school. Though it was nothing serious, it got him started on his path. "I was always into drawing," he said in the interview, "and I was always a smart ass kid when I was young, so I guess it was just a fun thing to incorporate my art into. Just the thought of getting up everywhere was my original goal." He also cites seeing his art teacher get paid to do illustration work, which hints at the ambitions of his later commercial work. It's interesting to note that in this interview he also bemoans the commercial state of street art-almost twenty years ago.
2. Animation Days
Years: 1996 - 1997
Notable works: Daria, Doug
Before KAWS found acclaim in the street art and fine art worlds, he graduated from the School of Visual Arts with an Illustration degree in 1996. Shortly after, he worked as a background painter for animated programs, such as 101 Dalmatians, Doug, and, bless it, MTV's classic Daria. We have yet to see any KAWS' Easter eggs in the backs of any of these programs, but then again, maybe we were too young to really be paying attention. It's arguable that the bold lines and bright colors of these cartoon programs had an effect on the artist's later work, not to mention that he draws much of his subject matter from them. KAWS told Pharrell Williams in an interview that this was how he discovered the paint he still uses today.
3. Subvert Adverts
Years: 1996 - 1999
Notable works: Untitled (Calvin Klein), Untitled (DKNY), Christy Turlington Ad Disruption
The mid-late-nineties stage of KAWS' work dealt with injecting his own iconography and graffiti writing into the ever-increasing corporate advertising that was seeping into urban landscapes. It's said he worked at the New York Metro System, making the spread of his work easier. He tooled with billboards and bus stop ads, as the video below shows, creating something that causes you to look twice. "I wanted people to think what I did was part of the ad campaign," KAWS said in 2004. "I painted with no brush strokes, clean and unobtrusive, as if it was part of the ad." His merging of the actual ad with the artwork itself speaks to the commerce/artwork duality KAWS consistently straddles. "They started doing those full-building billboards down Houston," KAWS told Interview Magazine in 2010, "taking over walls that had been covered in graffiti for years. It became a focal point for me to take back some of those spots." By 2008, these recovered ads were selling for $22,000 on eBay.
4. Playtime
Years: 1999 - Present
Notable works: Companion, Bendy, Chum, The Twins, Dissected Milo Companion, Accomplice
By 1999, after sharpening his graf game with skater kids in Lower Manhattan, KAWS traveled to Tokyo to continue his practice. Here, he'd enter the world of designer vinyl toy-making for which he has become so renowned. Inspired by Claes Oldenberg, he released his first figurine that year, an 8-inch tall version of his black and grey character he calls Companion, with the manufacturer Bounty Hunter. This would start KAWS on paths of commercial viability and also sculpture—an avenue he'd considered but had yet to venture into. KAWS continued to make limited edition toys in collaboration with KidRobot and under his own company OriginalFake, bringing the characters that appeared so reliably in his paintings in the past to life in an incredible way. This stage would also lead the artist to some of the most notable collaborations of his career, including with Bape in 2011.
5. Pure KAWS
Years: 2000 - 2006
Notable works: Homer and Liz, Running Chum, Dissected Companion
As the artist began gaining much broader acclaim for his insistent approach to the streets, KAWS also became bored with the interplay between advertising and his own artwork. He used some of the same subversive techniques as he had in bus stop ads but scrapped the ads altogether. Instead, he used the bus stops and phone booths as simply portals for display. This is the age his work would become singular to itself, and his style would solidify into a set of signifiers that were instantly recognizable.
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6. Magazine Hijacker
Years: 2004 - 2009
Notable works: Editorials and Covers with Vogue, Complex, Interview, and More
After gaining international acclaim, as the valuation of his removed street-art works rose, KAWS became Instead of putting his work on top of advertisements, he was encouraged by photographers and editorial teams to create original pieces on top of already-established work. KAWS would design covers for and superimpose his work on top of Complex, Vogue, Interview, Nylon, Mew York, and many more, X-ing out the eyes of renowned models from Milan to Minsk.
7. Cartoon Cut-Ups
Years: 2000 - Present
Notable works:The Kimpsons, Kurfs
Having realized the power of imagery that the viewer can already recognize, KAWS began merging the inflated skull, so central to much of his work, and appropriating it on cartoon characters. This would become his signature move—to give characters already deep in the culture a redesign, making them look grotesque, dead, and X-ed out. The Simpsons, The Smurfs, Spongebob Squarepants, Mickey Mouse, Peter Griffin and more have all gotten the KAWS treatment, to great effect.
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8. The OriginalFake Stage
Years: 2006 - 2013
Notable works: Clothing and Collectibles
By the time KAWS had realized his potential as a commercial design force, he was set to inject himself proper into the retail marketplace. On May 2, 2006, he opened, in collaboration with Medicom Toys and Nexus7, OriginalFake. Through this organization, he would sell his hard-to-find toys and custom clothing. OriginalFake's flagship store was in Aoyama, Japan, where KAWS' fan base thrived. But, it was announced earlier this year that OriginalFake would be shuttered—the store closed on May 31. It's still not totally clear what this means for KAWS stupendously prolific toy output.
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9. The Shoe Design Stage
Years: 2008
Notable works: Air Force 1s, Marc Jacbos
It was a notable step (ha) in the culture for KAWS when he began collaborating with big-name brands to work on footwear. The first of this was with high-fashion kilt-wearing mainstay Marc Jacobs—KAWS designed an X-ed up pair of flats with the company. In 2008, he also worked with Nike to design an insane pair of Air Force 1s.
10. The Sculpture Stage
Years: 2000 - 2010
Notable works: Passing By, Wonderful World
Having realized the potential of sculpture and seeing his work in three dimensions, KAWS began making larger and larger pieces. Again, these featured his recognizably puffed-up characters but on a much larger scale. The culmination of this was a 16-foot-tall steel version of Companion that sat outside of Hong Kong's Harbour City in 2010 and later outside of The Standard Hotel in New York. This Companion was shy, however, with his hands covering his face. "I was thinking, God, if I had to sit there all day and have a million people pass me and stare, I'd be mortified," KAWS told the Wall Street Journal last year. "That would be the worst experience ever. That's where the pose came from."
11. The Hip-Hop Era
Years: 2007 - 2009
Notable works: Til The Casket Drops, 808s and Heartbreak.
When KAWS began attracting the attention of producer Pharrell Williams, he edged into a new era of exposure for his work. Pharrell became obsessed with his paintings and sculptures—many of which now hang in the musician's Miami apartment. What this meant for KAWS was hip-hop artists tapping into his signature, easily recognizable style for their designs. He designed album covers for Clipse and also a special edition of Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreaks, a design that ended up on a billboard in Times Square, New York.
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12. Institutionalized
Years: 2006 - Present
Notable works: Global Gallery and Museum Shows
Since becoming a design phenomenon, KAWS has landed big-time shows at galleries and museums around the world. His first solo museum exhibition was in 2010, at the Ridgefield, Conn. Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. He's shown at Galerie Perrotin, at More Gallery in Switzerland, at KaiKai Kiki in New York, and his own OriginalFake store in Japan. Acclaimed Los Angeles gallery Honor Fraser is now his home. Also, he's also been a judge on Bravo's Next Great Work of Art and as a panel spokesman at the Fashion Institute of Technology—a man who is truly all over the map.
13. Family Friendly
Years: 2012
Notable works: Companion Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon
In 2012, KAWS floated further into the mainstream. For the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, he revealed a 41-foot version of Companion, in signature monochrome colors. CBS News reported that as part of the promotional cycle for the balloon, even a subway car was wrapped in KAWS artwork, a particularly ironic detail, considering how many trains he'd done illegal graffiti on coming up as a graffiti writer.
14. To The Moon(man)
Years: 2013
Notable works: MTV VMAs
Considering his rise, it was only a matter of time before a KAWS design was a vaunted, coveted piece of cultural significance. That's just what happened this summer when MTV announced that he'd done an exclusive redesign of the Moonman Video Music Awards statue. His artwork, in typical total-overtake KAWS fashion, will also be peppered throughout the show, which is the first major awards program to be held in Brooklyn, according to an MTV press release. His signature inflated skull design even appeared on bootleg VMA posters that appeared to have something to do with Kanye West's DONDA.
15. Fragmentation
Years: 2011 - Present
Notable works: Where The End Starts
KAWS' recent works have become increasingly fragmented, jumbled, and abstract. Though he's still using bold colors and bright lines, his characters are dissolving into intangible fields of color or merging into splatters that are completely new to the artist's work—KAWS is dissolving into unseen territory.