The Art Evolution of KAWS

The many phases of the street artist's career.

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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1. The Formative Years

2. Animation Days

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.

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4. Playtime

5. Pure KAWS

6. Magazine Hijacker

7. Cartoon Cut-Ups

8. The OriginalFake Stage

9. The Shoe Design Stage

10. The Sculpture Stage

11. The Hip-Hop Era

12. Institutionalized

13. Family Friendly

14. To The Moon(man)

15. Fragmentation

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