Supreme's Most Controversial Releases

When: Spring/Summer 2004 

Supreme has always been vocal about its political stance. But during the early 2000s, when America was led by former president George W. Bush, Supreme never held back its disapproval about the 43rd. Whether it was printing “Fuck Bush” on skateboard decks by Andrei Molodkin or on red box logo stickers, many anti-Bush Supreme items were produced during his terms in office between 2000 and 2008. In 2003 Supreme even dropped “I Hate Texas” T-shirts, which were likely a reference to Bush’s home state. While disliking the President of the United States isn’t necessarily a controversial opinion, this “Regime Change” T-shirt Supreme made was a bold statement that delivered blunt criticism about the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq—a conflict sparked by what we now know were incorrect assertions the United States made about Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction. This T-shirt features a graphic of Bush’s face pasted over a silhouette that resembles a symbolic statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down by United States Marines and Iraqi civilians in 2003. Hussein was the president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003 and known for running a dictatorship that was guilty of many human rights violations. However, allegations about Hussein running active W.M.D. programs or working with the terrorists behind the 2001 September 11 attacks were eventually unfounded. At the time, the toppling of Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square, parodied on this T-shirt, was widely televised and became an internationally recognized symbol of America winning the Iraq War. A month after the statue came down, Bush delivered his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech declaring that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” Of course, that was not the case, and American troops continued to fight in Iraq until 2011. The Iraq War led to 4,600 United States military deaths and between 280,771–315,190 Iraqi civilian deaths—the actual civilian death toll is also estimated to be much higher. According to the Pew Research Center, the majority of Americans today believe the Iraq War was “not worth fighting.” However, it's important to acknowledge that when Supreme made this T-shirt against the war in 2004, large majorities of Americans believed the reasons to invade Iraq were justified. So one could only imagine the heated conversations this T-shirt could have sparked when it was worn in 2004. 

When: Fall/Winter 2007

In 2007, Supreme released a collection of six skateboard decks with Takashi Murakami and another Japanese artist named Mr.—a Murakami protégé who was a member of the KaiKai KiKi studio. While Murakami designed Supreme skateboard decks featuring cute dogs, Mr.’s decks depicted children in a sexualized manner. Trust us, if you thought Balenciaga’s scrapped “Gift Shop” campaign was bad, Mr.’s skateboard decks for Supreme truly upped the ante. Today, it’s highly unlikely a Supreme collaboration like this would see the light of day. But to explain Mr.’s vision, his artwork is largely inspired by Japan’s Otakus—nerds who are all-consumed by their interests in video games, manga, or anime. One controversial aspect of Otaku culture is Lolicon—a name derived from the novel Lolita—which is manga that depicts young children erotically. While Lolicon is extremely off-putting for those outside of Japan, and falls under the category of criminal child pornography in the United States, it continues to be legally produced in Japan and remains a contentious aspect of Japan's larger obsession with anime or manga. In recent years, Mr.’s art has deviated from what was shown on those Supreme decks. But lord knows what would have happened to Supreme if they ever released something like this today. 

When: Spring/Summer 2008

Yes, Supreme once printed a cartoon graphic of children dressed as Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden, a KKK member, a pimp wearing Blackface, and a BDSM master on T-shirts, skateboard decks, and box logo stickers. This touchy Supreme graphic from 2008 was a part of a collaboration with Sean Cliver, a revered ‘90s skateboard graphic designer who previously designed boards for companies like Powell Peralta, World Industries, 101, Birdhouse, and more. In an interview with Supreme Museum, Cliver explained his idea for the graphic. “It was a loose continuation of a theme that started with a 101 Adam McNatt graphic from 1993 or ’94 featuring a lineup of babies doing bad things,” shared Cliver. “Not to get too conceptual, but I’ve always been fascinated by the blank, innocent slate that humans start from and then the horrible creatures they can eventually grow into.” While the meaning behind Cliver’s graphic would likely be lost in translation today, his work is representative of many other provocative graphics released by skateboard brands throughout history. 

When: Spring/Summer 2008

One memorable artist collaboration Supreme released was centered on Ralph Bakshi’s controversial 1975 film Coonskin. For Supreme’s Spring/Summer 2008 collection, the brand dropped three raglan tops that highlighted characters within Bakshi’s film. Coonskin, along with other animated films Bakshi produced in the ‘70s such as Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic, are considered to be some of the first full-length animated films centered on adult themes. By “adult,” we don’t necessarily mean risqué. The white Brooklyn native’s animations are surveyed to this day because of how they tackled adult subject matters such as politics and race relations through satire. Coonskin is the greatest example of this but also Bakshi’s most contentious work. The film satirizes Blaxploitation cinema and follows three anthropomorphic Blackface characters—Brother Rabbit, Preacher Fox, and Brother Bear—as they rise to the top of the criminal underworld in Harlem. The film is rife with a striking amount of Blackface caricatures along with crude depictions of gay men, transgender people, Italian Americans, and Jews. The shirts Supreme released spotlighted the film’s protagonist Brother Rabbit, background Blackface characters, and “Miss America”—a pornographic personification of America within the film who’s presented as a ​​conniving white woman that seduces Black characters into their demise. 

Coonskin divided many upon its release. According to The New York Times, the film received mixed feedback after it premiered at the Museum of Modern Art. Members of the civil rights group Congress for Racial Equality vehemently protested the film as racist and successfully pressured the movie studio Paramount to back out from distributing it. However, the Hollywood branch of another civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, supported Bakshi’s film. The film ended up being released through a smaller film studio even after several anonymous bomb threats were made to theaters screening it in New York. Bakshi has firmly defended Coonskin in many interviews, describing it as a “pro-Black” film that sought to say something about America’s historic subjugation of Black people. While it’s difficult to reach a verdict on Coonskin, seeing how Blackface on clothing has impacted brands like Gucci in recent years, it’s difficult to imagine this collaboration would have been sold by Supreme today.

When: Fall/Winter 2012

Some of the most controversial artists Supreme has ever collaborated with were the Chapman Brothers, and these decks clearly show why. We’re sure someone’s mother was disgusted when they saw their son pull out a skateboard deck that featured a toddler whose nose was replaced by a penis. Jake and Dinos Chapman, a duo recognized as a part of the ‘90s “Young British Artist” movement, are notorious for their provocative artwork. Aside from placing private parts on child mannequins and titling them Two-Faced Cunt and FuckFace, the Chapman Brothers have garnered plenty of controversy over the years. In 2001, they were criticized as vandals for adding their own embellishments to a mint-condition set of 19th-century etchings by Francisco Goya—they later garnered even more controversy in 2008 for doing something similar to watercolors actually painted by Adolf Hitler. 

The mannequins featured on some of these Supreme decks are so controversial that they even resurfaced in 2022, when Balenciaga’s owner, the luxury conglomerate Kering, came under fire for Balenciaga’s child advertisement scandal. Kering’s CEO, François-Henri Pinault, just happens to also be the owner of the holding company that owns Christie’s, an auction house that’s sold these controversial mannequins by the Chapman Brothers. The Internet noticed this coincidental connection and used it to fuel unfounded conspiracy theories about Pinault, Kering, and Balenciaga. The other two decks in this collaboration are from The Chapman Family Collection a work that features 34 wooden carvings the brothers created as commentary on both consumerism and ethnographic exhibitions of African art. These works presented parodies of traditional African art that were fused with iconography from McDonald’s. The British press had mixed feelings about it. When The Chapman Family Collection was first unveiled, The Guardian’s art critic, Jonathan Jones, wrote, “It is all genuinely offensive. Western modernism exploited tribal art, tearing it out of context to make it the vessel of primitivism.” Yet he also wrote, “But then, the museum displays that this exhibition parodies decontextualise and make a travesty of ethnographic art anyway; we see masks intended to be worn in specific social contexts reduced to aesthetic objects.” However you may feel about the Chapman Brothers’ art, one can certainly agree that it’s not for everyone and it was a bold artist collaboration for Supreme to pursue.

When: Spring/Summer 2016

The actual products highlighted in this collaboration between Supreme and the Japanese clothing label Sasquatchfabrix are fine. However, the lookbook for this collaboration created much controversy amongst Supreme’s Chinese and Korean consumers because it originally featured images of the Yasukuni Shrine in Chiyoda, Tokyo. This isn’t just a random Shinto shrine in Japan. It’s one that has been embroiled in controversy for decades because it commemorates those who died serving Japan’s military. This means the shrine memorializes many convicted war criminals who brutalized civilians in neighboring Asian countries that Japan once ruled over when it was an empire up until World War II. Although the Yasukuni Shrine is connected to religion, it’s still widely perceived as a physical testament to Japanese imperialism. To this day, visits to the shrine by Japanese politicians are controversial. That’s because these visits are interpreted as supporting a nationalist and revisionist history of Japan that downplays atrocities like the Nanjing Massacre. The photographer who shot this lookbook, Jiro Konami, still shoots for Supreme today, and the images of Yasukuni Shrine have been scrubbed from their archive. Supreme also generated similar controversy when releasing box logo T-shirts that raised funds for Japan’s relief efforts after the 2011 earthquake. Those box logos featured a graphic that referenced Japan’s rising sun flag, which was adopted as the war flag of the Imperial Japanese Army and is deemed to be offensive for similar reasons as the Yasukuni Shrine.  

When: Fall/Winter 2017

Surprisingly, this isn't even the first collaboration that Supreme has released featuring artwork made with bodily fluids. A year before Supreme released this collaboration with the New York City artist Andres Serrano, they collaborated with Dash Snow’s estate to release products that featured a newspaper of Saddam Hussein covered with the artist’s semen. However, the artwork it chose for its collaboration with Serrano revels in much more infamy. Piss Christ is a 60 by 40–inch photograph by Serrano that captures a plastic figurine of Jesus Christ crucified and submerged within the artist’s own urine. The piece made its debut at the Stux Gallery in New York City in 1987 and became a part of a touring exhibition organized by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. But when Piss Christ' became a part of that touring exhibition, which was technically funded by the United States government’s National Endowment for the Arts, Serrano began receiving death threats and his art riled conservatives within Congress. According to The New York Times, Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, a New York Republican, destroyed a copy of the exhibition catalog on the Senate floor and rallied 35 senators to sign a letter of protest that dubbed Serrano's work as ''shocking, abhorrent and completely undeserving of any recognition whatsoever.” Even in the 2010s, Piss Christ continued to draw protests when it was exhibited and was even vandalized. In numerous interviews, Serrano emphasized that Piss Christ was a reflection of his own ambivalence to his Christian upbringing and was not supposed to come off as blasphemous. “'Religion relies heavily on symbols, and my job as an artist is to pursue the manipulation of that symbolism and explore its possibilities,” Serrano told The New York Times in 1987. In June 2023, Serrano’s work was surprisingly co-signed by Pope Francis, who invited the artist to a gathering that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Vatican Museum’s “Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art.”

When: Fall/Winter 2018

Although Supreme didn’t hold their tongue when coming at Bush during its younger years as a brand, they certainly softened on releasing politically provocative graphics as they grew. However, they did have something to say when former president Donald J. Trump took office in 2016. Granted that they didn’t make anything like the aforementioned “Regime Change” T-shirts or a “Fuck Trump” graphic, Supreme subtly made its political stance very clear during Trump’s time in office. Supreme’s Spring/Summer 2017 collection included a “Fuck the President” graphic and apparel that spotlighted the 44th president, Barack Obama. But the brand’s most explicit denouncement of Trump came in 2018 with the release of these “18 & Stormy” T-shirts made in collaboration with Richard Prince. The T-shirts featured a composite image designed by the artist constructed out of the faces of 18 women who accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct along with Stormy Daniels. The T-shirt was released on the same week of the 2018 midterm elections, and all proceeds went toward Downtown for Democracy, a Democratic political action committee. The T-shirt made it clear that Supreme was not supporting Trump, and it likely alienated some of its right-leaning consumers.