KAWSUps and Downs2013
2013
About the Item
- Creator:KAWS (American)
- Creation Year:2013
- Dimensions:Height: 35 in (88.9 cm)Width: 23 in (58.42 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU118524854481
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’s oeuvre encompasses art toys, sculptures and colorful 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 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 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.
- Pop Shop II: one plate (L. pp. 96-97)By Keith HaringLocated in New York, NY1988 Screenprint in colors, on wove paper, with full margins 12 x 15 in. (30.5 x 38.1 cm) Edition of 200, HC Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil, recto FramedCategory
1980s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsPaper, Screen
- The NewsBy KAWSLocated in New York, NY2018 The complete set of 9 screenprints in colors Sheet: 24 x 24 in., each Edition of 100 Each sheet signed, dated and numbered in pencilCategory
2010s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
- Reflections on CrashBy Roy LichtensteinLocated in New York, NY1990 Lithograph, screenprint on paper and metalised PVC on paper S. 59 1/8 x 75 in. (150.2 x 190.5 cm) Edition of 68 Signed, dated and numbered in pencil, lower marginCategory
1990s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsPaper, Lithograph, Screen
- Ups and DownsBy KAWSLocated in New York, NY2013 The complete set of 10 screenprints in colors Sheet: 35 x 23 inches, each Edition of 100 Each signed, dated and numbered in pencil Contained in original portfolio boxCategory
2010s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
- Landscape Pot with PlantBy Jonas WoodLocated in New York, NY2017 Screenprint in colors on Somerset tub sized Satin Enhanced White paper Sheet: 39 2/5 x 29 1/2 inches Edition of 100 Signed, dated and numbered in pencil Unframed, mint conditionCategory
2010s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
- Flowers 2By Alex KatzLocated in New York, NY2017 Screenprint in colors, on Crane Museo Max 365gsm paper Sheet: 23 x 28 1/2 in. (58.4 x 72.4 cm) Edition of 100 Signed and numbered in pencil Unframed, excellent conditionCategory
2010s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsPaper, Screen
- Positive, Abstract Screenprint by Peter GrippeBy Peter GrippeLocated in Long Island City, NYArtist: Peter Grippe, American (1912 - 2002) Title: Positive Year: 1960 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Image Size: 39 x 20 inches Size: 46 x 35 in. (11...Category
1950s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
- $ Dollar Sign, FS II.277By Andy WarholLocated in Miami, FLTECHNICAL INFORMATION: Andy Warhol Dollar Sign, FS II.277 1982 Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board 19 3/4 x 15 5/8 in. 48/60 - Each Piece is Unique Pencil signed and numbered Conditi...Category
1980s Pop Art Still-life Prints
MaterialsScreen
- American Dream #2By Robert IndianaLocated in Miami, FLTECHNICAL INFORMATION: Robert Indiana American Dream #2 1982 Screenprint on 4 separate sheets 26 3/4 x 26 3/4 in. each sheet (77 1//2 x 77 1/2 in. overall) A.P. of 9/15 (Artist's Pr...Category
1980s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
- 1980's Large Silkscreen Chinese Characters Serigraph Pop Art Print ChinaBy Chryssa Vardea-MavromichaliLocated in Surfside, FLChryssa Vardea-Mavromichali (Greek: Χρύσα Βαρδέα-Μαυρομιχάλη; December 31, 1933 – December 23, 2013) was a Greek American artist who worked in a wide variety of media. An American art pioneer in light art and luminist sculpture widely known for her neon, steel, aluminum and acrylic glass installations, she has always used the mononym Chryssa professionally. She worked from the mid-1950s in New York City studios and worked since 1992 in the studio she established in Neos Kosmos, Athens, Greece. Chryssa was born in Athens into the famous Mavromichalis family from the Mani Peninsula. one of her sisters, who studied medicine, was a friend of the poet and novelist Nikos Kazantzakis. Chryssa began painting during her teenage years and also studied to be a social worker.In 1953, on the advice of a Greek art critic, her family sent her to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere where Andre Breton, Edgard Varese, and Max Ernst were among her associates and Alberto Giacometti was a visiting professor. In 1954, at age twenty-one, Chryssa sailed for the United States, arrived in New York and went to San Francisco, California to study at the California School of Fine Arts. Returning to New York in 1955, she became a United States citizen and established a studio in the city. Chryssa's first major work was The Cycladic Books preceded American minimalism by seventeen years. 1961, Chryssa's first solo exhibition was mounted at The Guggenheim. 1963, Chryssa's work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in curator Dorothy Canning Miller's Americans 1963 exhibition. The artists represented in the show also included Richard Anuszkiewicz, Lee Bontecou, Robert Indiana, Richard Lindner, Marisol, Claes Oldenburg, Ad Reinhardt, James Rosenquist and others. 1966, The Gates to Times Square, regarded as "one of the most important American sculptures of all time" and "a thrilling homage to the living American culture of advertising and mass communications." The work is a 10 ft cube installation of two huge letter 'A's through which visitors may walk into "a gleaming block of stainless steel and Plexiglas that seems to quiver in the play of pale blue neon light" which is controlled by programmed timers. First shown in Manhattan's Pace Gallery, it was given to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York in 1972. 1972, The Whitney Museum of American Art mounted a solo exhibition of works by Chryssa. That's All (early 1970s), the central panel of a triptych related to The Gates of Times Square, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art between 1975 and 1979. 1973, Chryssa's solo exhibition at the Gallerie Denise René was reviewed for TIME magazine by art critic Robert Hughes before it went on to the Galleries Denise René in Düsseldorf and Paris. Other works by Chryssa in composite honeycomb aluminum and neon in the 1980s and 1990s include Chinatown, Siren, Urban Traffic, and Flapping Birds. Chryssa 60/90 retrospective exhibition in Athens in the Mihalarias Art Center. After her long absence from Greece, a major exhibition including large aluminum sculptures - cityscapes, "neon boxes" from the Gates to the Times Square, paintings, drawings etc. was held in Athens. In 1992, after closing her SoHo studio, which art dealer Leo Castelli had described as "one of the loveliest in the world," Chryssa returned to Greece. She found a derelict cinema which had become a storeroom stacked with abandoned school desks and chairs, behind the old Fix Brewery near the city center in Neos Kosmos, Athens. Using the desks to construct enormous benches, she converted the space into a studio for working on designs and aluminum composite honeycomb sculptures. The Athens National Museum of Contemporary Art, which was founded in 2000 and owns Chryssa's Cycladic Books, is in the process of converting the Fix Brewery into its permanent premises. Greek Exhibits, European Cultural Center of Delphi (Council of Europe). "Apollo's Heritage"(July 4, 2003 – July 30, 2003). Works by sixteen artists: Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Nikos Engonopoulos, Yannis Tsarouchis, Giorgos Sikeliotis, Takis, Arman, Fernando Botero, Chryssa, Dimitris Mytaras...Category
1980s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsScreen
- Joe Tilson British Pop Art Screenprint, Color Lithograph 4 Seasons 4 ElementsBy Joe TilsonLocated in Surfside, FLSilkscreen screenprint or Lithograph Hand signed and numbered. An esoteric, mystical, Kabbala inspired print with Hebrew as well as other languages. Joseph Charles Tilson RA (born 2...Category
1970s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Screen
- Silkscreen Oiran Day Glo Fluorescent 1960's Japanese Pop Art Print Geisha KimonoBy Ushio ShinoharaLocated in Surfside, FLUshio Shinohara (born 1932, Tokyo), nicknamed “Gyu-chan”, is a Japanese Neo-Dadaist artist. His bright, large work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seoul and others. Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, are the subjects of a documentary film by Zachary Heinzerling called Cutie and the Boxer (2013). Shinohara's parents instilled in him a love for painters such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. His father was a tanka poet who was taught by Wakayama Bokusui. Shinohara’s mother was a painter who went to the Woman’s Art University (Joshibijutsu Daigaku) in Tokyo. In 1952 Shinohara entered the Tokyo Art University (later renamed to Tokyo University of the Arts), majoring in oil painting, however he left before graduation in 1957. In 1960 Shinohara participated in a group called "Neo-Dada Organizers". (Masunobu Yoshimura, Genpei Akasegawa, Shusaku Arakawa, Ushio Shinohara, Sho Kazakura, Tomio Miki, Tetsumi Kudo, Natsuyuki Nakanishi) This group of artists showed their works of art in an exhibition in the 1960s called the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. This exhibition was sponsored by a newspaper, was open to the public, and was not judged by anyone. This type of exhibition was a form of an anti-salon and was a stepping stone for Shinohara’s sculptures of found objects which acquired the label of “junk art...Category
1960s Pop Art 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.