The 10 Most Interesting Artist Collaborations of 2010

All year, we’ve been commenting on collaborations—“this sneaker x this guy, this T-shirt x this guy”—but not all collabos are created equal. Every now and then, something comes through that is decidedly unique. Sometimes it’s a street guy collaborating with a non-conventional brand, and other times it’s a respected artist going above and beyond just doing a color-up. We’ve seen most of it this year, so here are the Complex picks for The 10 Most Interesting Artist Collaborations of 2010

The Hypebeast set was up in arms over this one, claiming that KAWS and his “XX” was getting tired. FOH. For our money, there wasn’t a better brand/artist paring. It was Mexico-only, which was a bummer, but to the marketing person who made this happen, great job.

We heard that Nike tried to do an artist series of product (jerseys, warm-ups, and footwear) for the 2006 World Cup, but assumed that the idea had been shelved indefinitely. When the Swoosh unveiled the project for 2010, it was sick to finally see official jersey collaborations with cool-guy artists. No brand brings culture and sport together like Nike, and this series is deserving of recognition.

We couldn’t afford the John Baldessaris that sold when the Lehman Brothers collection went on auction earlier this year, but when Supreme announced its latest artist series, we got the Amex out. Baldessari selected three limited-edition works for the collaboration: floating nose photomontages on top of blue, yellow, black, and gray decks. Who doesn’t want to consider spatial absence and dissonance while pushing down Lafayette?

Puma went all in on the Africa/soccer thing this year, sponsoring a dozen teams and hiring the portrait artist Kehinde Wiley to do collaboration work including a special jersey and some sneakers. The most interesting part of the pairing, though, was Wiley’s 5’x 6’ portrait of African soccer players Samuel Eto’o, John Mensah, and Emmanuel Eboue. Africa meets Germany meets Brooklyn. Cool.

12oz Prophet kicked things off this year by bringing Montana paint cans to its online store, helping make Montana collaborations possible. ZETA did up a can in collaboration with G-Shock and IRAK just released one for the holidays. Montana has always been the king, but seeing the artist collabo cans was a new take on an iconic product for the Spanish company.

The richest man in art has been hounding BMW for this opportunity since 2003, so it was sick to see Jeff Koons’ art car with BMW finally go down. Koons follows an art-car lineage that includes Andy Warhol, Roy Lichenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. It’s a standard case of the rich servicing the rich, but Koons killed this.

KRINK is a graffiti staple, and the Tom Sachs co-sign made it that much more cool. Of course it wasn’t practical, but what art ever is? Congrats, KR, on slinging this version of the K-12 set at $500 a pop.

We’re pretty blown away every time The Simpsons pulls something over on Fox, but the Bansky intro was really something else. The sinister treatment of the media corporation as a Korean sweatshop fraught with skeletons, rats, and despair while hustling out DVDs was impressive...and insane.

Before his MBDTF covers hit the Internet, George Condo took over Dover Street Market with Adam Kimmel to promote the designer’s new Fall/Winter 2010 collection. Condo designed masks that models then wore in a casino setting, easily the coolest and scariest moment of fashion week over in London. So sick.

We said it in our Top Artists of 2010 list, but Scott Campbell is rapidly becoming that dude. His solo shows have been impressive, and Campbell’s work for the Spring/Summer 2011 Louis Vuitton show take it for most interesting collaboration. Scott created a print that was used on shirts, pants, bags, and scarves, but the sickest part was the tattoos he created for the necks of the male models at the runway show. Brand ambassadors, indeed.