KAWSMan's Best Friend #62016
2016
About the Item
- Creator:KAWS (American)
- Creation Year:2016
- Dimensions:Height: 35 in (88.9 cm)Width: 23 in (58.42 cm)
- More Editions & Sizes:Edition of 100Price: $10,000
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Framing:Framing Options Available
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1977213314972
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 creates all kinds of art — there are KAWS figures and toys, sculptures and colorful drawings, 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 KAWS statues and other 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 figures, prints, sculptures and mixed media works on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: New York, NY
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 7 days of delivery.
- Four Seasons of HOPE, The complete portfolio of 4 prints, Gold EditionBy Robert IndianaLocated in New York, NYRobert Indiana’s message of HOPE has been an important, poetic language spanning his long career. The Four Seasons of HOPE was created for his solo exhibition at the historic Four Se...Category
2010s Contemporary Prints and Multiples
MaterialsScreen
- Four Seasons of Hope, The complete portfolio of 4 prints, Silver EditionBy Robert IndianaLocated in New York, NYRobert Indiana’s message of HOPE has been an important, poetic language spanning his long career. The Four Seasons of HOPE was created for his solo exhibition at the historic Four Seasons Restaurant in tribute to his friend and architect Philip Johnson. Robert Indiana Four...Category
2010s Contemporary Prints and Multiples
MaterialsScreen
- Man's Best Friend #2By KAWSLocated in New York, NYScreenprint in black and white Saunders Waterford High White Paper Signed and dated recto in pencil The KAWS motif has become instantly recognizable with traditional cartoon characters transformed into vibrant, playful, and near-abstract enigmas. Known for his iconic characters with X’s on their eyes and gloves, KAWS delivers his classic dose of street-art meets contemporary art in this brilliant and minimalist work. Published by Pace Prints...Category
2010s Contemporary Prints and Multiples
MaterialsScreen
- Decade: Autoportraits from Vinalhaven SuiteBy Robert IndianaLocated in New York, NYRobert Indiana’s life-long interest in numbers derives from their range of significances and potential as loaded symbols. Indiana credits his penchant for numbers and their inherent ...Category
1980s Contemporary Prints and Multiples
MaterialsScreen
- Fast Sketch Still Life with Abstract PaintingBy Tom WesselmannLocated in New York, NYScreen Print in colors on Museum Board, Edition of 100 Signed and Dated Provenance: Artist Studio Private Collection, CA Private Collection, NYCategory
1980s Contemporary Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
- Lantern Flowers, Black and Blue from Big Lantern Flowers, 2017By Donald SultanLocated in New York, NYThis is a screenprint in black and blue with flocking on museum board, Edition of 30, Signed, titled and dated in pencil, numbered PP 3/3, a printer's proof 57.8 x 57.8 inches is th...Category
2010s Contemporary Prints and Multiples
MaterialsScreen
- Lincoln Center, Abstract Geometric Screenprint by Joyce KozloffBy Joyce KozloffLocated in Long Island City, NYUntitled, Lincoln Center by Joyce Kozloff, American (1942) Date: 1982 Screenprint, signed, numbered, and dated in pencil Edition of 38/144 Image Size: 2...Category
1980s Contemporary Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
- 1968 Vardea Chryssa 'National Collection of Fine ArtsLocated in Brooklyn, NYPaper Size: 42.5 x 28 inches ( 107.95 x 71.12 cm ) Image Size: 29.5 x 19.5 inches ( 74.93 x 49.53 cm ) Framed: No Condition: B: Very Good Condition, with signs of handling or age ...Category
1960s Contemporary Prints and Multiples
MaterialsScreen
- Les nourritures terrestresBy CorneilleLocated in Malmo, SEPublisher GKM. Unframed. Edition of 200 ex. Paper: 300gr. Goya. Signed, dated and numbered. Free shipment worldwide. Corneille, one of the founders of the COBRA group, has passed aw...Category
1990s Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsScreen
- "Untitled" serigraph with color photo by Jean Le Gac from "Kinderstern"Located in Boca Raton, FL"Untitled" serigraph of Native Americans and horse with attached color photo by artist Jean Le Gac from the "Kinderstern" portfolio, published in 1989 by Edition Domberger to raise m...Category
1980s Contemporary Animal Prints
MaterialsScreen
- Streetcar Situation Green A/P 1/1 -figurative, playful, pop-art, limited editionBy Charles PachterLocated in Bloomfield, ONThis artist’s proof (1/1) is a playful homage to the beloved image of a Toronto streetcar. Pop Artist Charlie Pachter was inspired to create a series of prints on streetcars for one of his first exhibitions in the seventies. This serigraph features the detailed outline of a streetcar angled across three panels—the back and front of a streetcar painted green appears on either side—top and bottom. The backdrop is neutral, bordered in gold. Pachter is a much-admired Canadian artistic polymath, his colourful pop artwork merging playful even irreverent elements with deeply iconic imagery. “….a good art critic would compare it with Warhol’s soup cans...Category
1970s Contemporary Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
MaterialsScreen
- Jonas Wood, Holiday - 2018, Screenprint, Still Life, Signed PrintBy Jonas WoodLocated in Hamburg, DEJonas Wood (American, b. 1977) Holiday, 2018 Medium: Screenprint on Rising Museum Board Dimensions: 26.7 × 20.3 cm (10 1/2 × 8 in) Edition of 250: Hand-signed and numbered Condition:...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
Recently Viewed
View AllRead More
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.