Just KAWS.

It's KAWS. It's NECK FACE. It's an idea. And it's why we haven't updated this site in a while. Or at least it's as good an excuse as any. Enjoy!

Subversion of Identity in the Artwork of KAWS: Creating an Art-Commerce Dialectic for Evolving the Artist’s Medium

      This paper will examine how the artist KAWS’ creation of a symbolic identity through the subversion of popular culture imagery, having earned him an artistic credibility worthy of commercial recognition, provided the artist a cycle through which he could evolve his expression with the momentum he achieved revolving between his artistic and commercial viability. From the anti-corporate anti-art that began with his graffiti, KAWS’ career echoed a Hegelian Dialectic, wherein a thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad of ideas (N1) would continually spawn new artistic and commercial achievements. After advertisements (thesis) defaced by graffiti (antithesis) found success as collage (synthesis,) KAWS was able to control the dialectic, providing the arguments to his own solutions, contrasting art with commerce and commerce with art, each new art-commerce synthesis becoming a collage of philosophies and reaching a deeper level of meaning. This art-commerce KAWS Dialectic will be proven not only to be a success for the artist but something other artists concerned with commercial viability may follow as this paper will too explore in an introduction to the popular success of KAWS’ protégé NECK FACE.
     Brian Donnelly became established as a graffiti artist while a student with the second-lowest GPA at St. Anthony’s Preparatory School in Jersey City, NJ in the early 1990s. Seeking a way to make himself known in the community he put the graffiti tag KAWS that he adopted on every surface he could find from freight trains to billboards. When asked in 2004 why he chose this identity he explained, “when I used it in graffiti I never thought I’d be making art for a living. There’s no meaning and they’re good letters. They just live well together.” (N2) This identity is effective on several counts in that it protects his work from being traced back to its source, its brevity makes it easier to install in less time - two things beneficial to art crime. It can be argued too that in choosing the characters that when assembled spell K-A-W-S, Donnelly demonstrated an innate understanding in the sophistication of form as well as providing a sign of his crossing of art and commerce to come. Consider this anecdotal evidence that suggests striking, angular letters can attract attention separate from imagery as in this scene from the HBO film RKO 281, (N3) a dramatization of the production of the film Citizen Kane:

     SCHAEFER: Citizen Kane.
     WELLES: Pardon?
     SCHAEFER: Citizen Kane. There’s your title.
     (Welles Muses.)
     WELLES: A “Z” and a “K” in the title. That would draw the eye. For the poster.
     I like that. The Prisoner of Zenda had a “Z” and a “P” and that worked--

However, as graffiti artists work in crews - KAWS was a member of DF, FC and TC5 - he once found himself piecing (creating a tag of multiple elements over time) (N4) with a friend when the artist created the icon which would appear in some way in every work made thereafter:
     “In 1992... my friend and I were doing pieces. He was taking forever, so I started painting things around it. One of them was the skull. I started using it on a lot of billboards.” (N5) In this same year KAWS would begin earning a BFA at the School of Visual Arts in NYC where he graduated in 1996. The commencement of this academic art education would coincide with the conclusion of the first triad of the dialectic of KAWS’ body of work, the synthesis of advertising imagery and artistic form to create a new imagery from which is derived the skull icon. “I was painting on big billboards like Captain Morgan and Snoopy [Met Life]. Then it was bus shelters and phone booths, the lettering dropped and the skull imagery came about.” (N6) Hereafter the skull iconography would become an element in every triad of the artist’s dialectic.
     In attending SVA and in moving to NYC in 1996, two events would occur to further his artistic growth. One, he would become “teacher’s pet in college. By [his] second year, [he] had independent study with [his] teachers. [He] was really into learning about painting and breaking down things you see and being able to reproduce it.” (N7) This would give his new work an element of cubism, as he told a writer for a 2000 article that “basically it’s layering - breaking up the imagery into layers and making things drop back or push forward.” (N8.) Wholly two-dimensional figures would push their way in and out of his three-dimensional scenes. Two, he would receive a key to all the bus shelters in Manhattan from the more established artist Barry McGee who surrendered his graffiti name, Twist, when he entered the art establishment.
     There are two stages of development in his application of layering in the bus stop advertisements. Consider Milk Ad and Guess Ad both from 1997. In Milk Ad we see a black KAWS skull masking the identity of the child shown giving identity to his icon as the child’s eyes, mouth and hair show through, in harmony with the skull. The icon becomes the center of attention because the model is the center of attention. In his next evolution, in Guess Ad, there’s a new character, later simply named Bendy, who wraps his way around the Guess model, even through his pants, and becoming the focus of the model’s gaze, the center of his attention, thus too becoming the center of attention for the advertisement’s audience. It’s no longer a KAWS character modeling for a product, it’s KAWS as model and product just as in his high school years his graffiti tags served a double purpose as artist’s work and artist’s signature in one. In both cases the artist’s identity cannot be separated from what it is he is creating.
      As KAWS chose to appropriate the surfaces most accessible to him as an artist and to the public as an audience in his high school years, it is no surprise he would take McGee’s offer of the key to Manhattan’s bus shelters. KAWS could continue to find recognition, develop his craft, and work within his comfort zone of manipulating commercial canvases in plain sight. Doing this would attract both the attention of the art community and the business community providing shows of his bus shelter posters at Magidson Fine Art, advertisements being provided for free by brands such as Diesel, Paper Magazine commissioning KAWS to deface a series of their magazine’s covers for an anniversary exhibition and the New Museum in NYC releasing two prints of KAWS’ manipulations of fashion model portraits, all of this occurring between 1996 and 2000.
     Thus taking the synthesis of his first triad, the pure image and absence of signature that overlaid his early billboards, it would during the SVA years become the thesis which he would contrast with the antithesis of advertising models which would result in a new synthesis, a literally signature skull character. Yet as sure as the artist’s skill and growth was in his stylistic transitions, they’ve been connected by twists of fate: A moment of boredom brought about the skull, a gift of a key gave him unprecedented access greater than any street artist before him and the destruction of those bus shelters, something that increased the artist's collectibility but decreased his access to an audience by their near immediate and constant removal, led the artist to bring about a change in medium to increase reach.
     In 1999, KAWS entered a long-lasting relationship with the toy manufacturer Medicom in Japan, which the artist funded himself, to create his first toy, the Companion, created in a limited edition of 500. When asked about his limited number toys, KAWS responded “It’s sort of how an artist does a print.” (N9) In creating a multiple that is three-dimensional he made a giant leap in this art-commerce synthesis. One, from two characters existing side by side as in the bus shelter advertisements to two living in one form - this isn’t a snaked body or masked body but one body with two evocations - KAWS gave new life to an old body and transferred the successful legacy of Disney’s own art-commerce synthesis, everything Mickey Mouse represents, to himself. Before creating this character KAWS worked as a freelance Disney animator and he recognized that “if I were going to do a toy, I’d start at the top. The best known character is Mickey Mouse. (N10.) Two, he capitalized on the value of his work. The marketplace became the way to measure the reach of his work by how fast or well it sold, numbering his work did this. Three, he expanded his audience from those who could only appreciate an object - the passersby, to the consumers in the art and toy communities. The broader the gap he could bridge between two communities. By doing this, commercial viability enters the art-commerce triad in the KAWS Dialectic for the first time. The thesis of a an artistic hybrid figure, the KAWS take on Mickey Mouse, contrasted with the commercial incarnation of that figure, the consumable multiple Companion, created a new art-commerce synthesis, sellable art based on hybrid versions of toy and cartoon characters which would be shown throughout the world and become the basis for his first book, KAWS Exposed.
     Over the next two years he returned to previous themes such as masking characters in multiples and installing new works in bus shelters but he no longer had to share someone else’s spotlight. KAWS was now the artist and product in the new bus shelter ads, and the images of the Companion and the Chum, based on another animated corporate icon, the Michelin Man, evoked strength and triumph. These works gave the passersby a show as before, but they also advertised his shows to the art community and a new toy, the numbered multiple Chum, to the toy community. The Chum also became the first character to be part of a major commission, from DC Shoes, which showed a close-up of its charging form on the sides of their sneakers. While Diesel previously gave KAWS posters to manipulate, (N11) no major company had given him a product to alter before this. Following the success of this first collaboration, future commissions followed propelling him forward in terms of commercial viability, however now his art was being appropriated for someone else’s fame. It was commercially mutually beneficial but a 180 degree turn from his starting point as an artist, now he was the model in their billboards.
    To remedy this, KAWS created a new series of works, paintings of The Kimpsons, his own take on the autonomy of art-commerce synthesis The Simpsons possessed and in an evolution from how he appropriated Disney’s success and in response to collaborations filling the marketplace and overshadowing art, the synthesis The Kimpsons paintings achieved is an antithesis of art and commerce, not being what anyone expected in either community.
     Just as the world of The Simpsons was proliferating in 2001, and toys were being released of every character to ever be featured on the show, KAWS created hand-painted packaging, in the scale of the actual packaging, of his own version of The Simpsons. The Kimpsons paintings then had plastic blister packaging sealed to the painted canvas. KAWS showed and sold these works as well as published a book KAWS C:10 of reproductions. The title of the book, C:10, refers to the ratings system which is used to value the condition and worth of trading cards and toys in their original packaging. (To coincide with these works, KAWS collaborated with the art magazine Arkitip, designing a Bart Kimpson cover for Arkitip #11 which included a package of trading cards based on these paintings.)
     The message sent by these works, in the absence of a product contained in the plastic packaging is multi-fold. It makes the audience aware of how desperate they are to possess a product that they would lust for something that contains nothing and at the same time it reinforces a Pavlovian instinct to want it even more, the sight of the packaging making you want to tear it open. However unlike with the numbered multiple toys, one can’t put it back in the box, they’re destroying the work. The message to the art community is how silly it is art can’t be touched or enjoyed, and how the powers that be require art be revered from afar. The platic packaging just reinforces the tension of barriers in museums and galleries, a literal interpretation of how institutions figuratively keep art out of the people’s hands and how the exposure of art can devalue it. (N12)
     It doesn’t seem arguable that there was never a production of toys based on The Kimpsons due to copyright infringement. In the past KAWS dealt with manipulating more established corporate identities and never faced a challenge. He admitted in an interview that he has “had some inquiries but nothing’s ever gone anywhere. I’m up front about it.” (N13) Instead it seems it would have defeated the purpose of the above art-commerce message. He did send a different message. He sent the message there is a way to do an art-commerce collaboration with a brand that makes it tangible for the masses without reducing the meaning. This is something neither Andy Warhol nor Keith Haring achieved in their respective collaborations with Stephen Sprouse and Vivienne Westwood in the 1980s. In those instances, artwork would take on the shape of the designers’ pieces and be sold in a limited number to an exclusive clientele no different than the way their gallery work was shown. KAWS found his greatest commercial success to date by collaborating with Nigo, the founder and owner of A Bathing Ape in Japan, the country where KAWS had first and foremost found mainstream success as an artist.
     A Bathing Ape or BAPE, started as a reappropriation of a cultural icon; the ape head logo comes from the costumes in Nigo's favorite film, The Planet of the Apes, and it appears as a tag on every product BAPE produces. Over the years BAPE collaborated with a number of other streetwear brands and manipulated recognizable products as KAWS did to pose the question to the consumer how to best enjoy a tee shirt with a Warhol-inspired hand screened print sealed in a reappropriated soup can, as art or packaging, and a few years later did the same thing with a tee shirt inside a reappropriated glass champagne bottle, charging as much for the shirt (wrapped in yellow to evoke Cristal) as a bottle of Cristal would cost. And just as brands sought out the artist KAWS to improve their image, a myriad of musical artists, from Jay-Z to Good Charlotte, sought the brand BAPE to make tee shirts of their names in BAPE’s signature apehead camouflage pattern to improve their popularity in the japanese market. All of this, combined with the fact that Nigo is KAWS’ greatest artistic patron, can help infer why two giants of their respective talents who are more in demand than they are seeking sponsorship, would choose to work with one another.
     Together they designed dozens of patterns of hybridized KAWS ape heads for every piece of clothing and accessory BAPE produces and in this past year turned the tee shirts, sweatshirts and coats into characters themselves, with just eyes and a mouth appearing on the pieces. With that latest development, turning the clothing into a pure character and not just a logo, they both find their greatest success in reaching to an audience, as the consumer is turned into a walking billboard for both the artist and the brand, bringing their work into the home, the gallery, the streets in-between and turns all their consumers into hybridized KAWS characters, the ultimate in collage, appropriation and synthesis: The consumer is now canvas, collector and artist, assembling their identity based on their buying and dressing habits, giving the work context by their own actions. If Jay-Z is on stage wearing a character-outfit, it's as much the character performing as it is the musical artist thus expanding the reach and possibility of the character and of KAWS into all figurative and literal arenas.
     The commercial success of this achievement and of working with a business partner and artistic patron provided KAWS with the opportunity to become in a final art-commerce synthesis, a mentor-patron to the next generation of those who seek to follow this model. It is the thesis of being a successful artist merged with the experience of success in commerce that make this synthesis rather than it being spawned from a conflict. As a result of this last triad ending in a synthesis coming from harmony rather than conflict, it is representative of the underlying harmony that evolved throughout the artist’s work. The hybridizing forms born from artistic and commercial conflict have ultimately resulted in harmonious artistic and commercial viability.
     It is this model that can be already seen in the art and commercial work of NECK FACE, a NYC-based street artist who, from what is known of his biography, shared a similar early desire for fame and pursued similar artistic training. NECK FACE continues to see NYC as the notebook of a bored student, scribbling variations on his name and crude doodles around the margins of the city as book: abandoned buildings and closed metal gates along Canal Street and throughout the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He evolved from a crew where he attended SVA in pursuit of a BFA, just as KAWS did, and NECK FACE’s work continues to evolve from name identity to imagery in response to his work’s reactions. A building outside the Manhattan side of the Holland Tunnel that read NECK FACE across its top floors was painted over by the building’s owners. The loss of that work prompted a mural, like those seen honoring the dead on sides of buildings in the margins of the city. In it, a weeping demonic figure that evokes crude elementary drawing and a sense of rock and roll has painted below it "FEELINGS HURT" in the NECK FACE style of writing. The demon now serves as signature and identity just like the KAWS skull. And with the british fashion line Maharishi designed by art collector Hardy Blechman commissioning canvases featuring NECK FACE’s work that can be hanged as art or turned into clothes or upholstery, commissioning a collaborative clothing line that evokes bored students who draw on their jeans in school as well as retailing NECK FACE’s first book, Satan’s Bride, published by KAWS, the success of both the artist and the formula may be guaranteed.

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