KAWS PINOCCHIO STORY BACKGROUND PROFESSIONAL

To say KAWS’s sculptures and paintings are commercial and kitschy-even vacuous-is to offer something that’s closer to a description of the work than a critique of it.

KAWS PINOCCHIO STORY BACKGROUND PROFESSIONAL

Where he runs into trouble is with the professional scolds who see in KAWS’s oeuvre nothing more than kitsch. KAWS has been well-received by very wealthy collectors, some with significant clout in the worlds of fashion and entertainment. Discomfort with KAWS is a symptom of the inexact correlation between the former and the latter. traditional hierarchies.” But there are multiple hierarchies within the art world, some defined by socioeconomic standing and others by cultural capital. Pasternak chalks it up to the fact that KAWS “doesn’t respect. 1 KAWS and his advocates believe the source of this discomfort is snobbery. KAWS “makes the art world uncomfortable,” Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, told the New York Times. A prestigious biennial has yet to include one of his monumental “COMPANION” sculptures, which feature a be-skulled and blinkered Mickey Mouse knock-off. KAWS’s paintings of cartoon characters modified with his trademark bulbous skull heads and Xed-out eyes are not to be found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His prolific collaboration with fashion brands ranging from Dior to Supreme to Uniqlo, as well as consumer goods companies like Hennessy, seems only to reinforce his work’s appeal for his collectors, many of whom are celebrities. Last spring, at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, one of his paintings sold at auction for nearly fifteen million US dollars.

Until the inevitable bidding war among mega-galleries over his future is settled, he’ll have to make do with exclusive representation by the Upper East Side powerhouse Skarstedt.

This summer, KAWS departed from the elite Perrotin gallery after eleven years and nine solos at the gallery’s locations around the world. The Brooklyn Museum, having hosted one of them in 2015, will open a “major retrospective” in 2021. The artist, 45, has had eight separate museum solo exhibitions. If there are art world gatekeepers intent on excluding Brian Donnelly, who has worked under the name KAWS since the mid-1990s, it should be clear by now that they are fighting a losing battle.

Kaws pinocchio story background