Detail of KAWS Four Foot Dissected Companion, 2009
Inspired by the Pop aesthetics of Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselmann and driven by his personal captivation with cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse or the Michelin Man, KAWS — born Brian Donnelly — emerged from the 1990s New York street art scene. It was in that setting that he started his career, creating 'forced collaborations' by employing advertisement found in public places including telephone booths.
Upon his move to Tokyo, where he continued to broaden his lexicon as a graffiti provocateur, KAWS also embraced the expanding universe of limited edition toys and appropriated these into his art, ultimately creating his own cast of characters and such works of art as Four Foot Dissected Companion.
KAWS dissected this world-famous pop culture icon and revealed the bitter truth
KAWS Four Foot Dissected Companion, 2009
The character, Companion, based on the well-known cartoon Mickey Mouse, can be seen in the right part of the body which features a grayscale clown-like figure resembling the same skinny-legged appearance of the Walt Disney creation. Companion's right half is further marked with the artist's stylistic signature: exaggerated ears and the typical crossed-out eyes. Intriguingly, the left half of the figure in this particular work from our New Now sale has been dissected, as the title suggests, as if KAWS sought to examine every possible layer of this world-famous pop culture icon and reveal the bitter truth: childhood is over, and behind a cartoon there lurks a human being.
The above works chart KAWS' artistic progression in the 1990s, developing his cartoon character lexicon while reappropating advertisements. Above: KAWS Untitled (Jalouse), 1999; Below: KAWS Paris, 1999.
Blending humour with more mature notions of life and death, Four Foot Dissected Companion is playful and contemplative at the same time, and reminds its viewers of the ephemerality of both the body and the nature of fun.
With such works as these, KAWS joins a formidable list of artists including Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara who, in producing these "toys", aim to blur the line between art and commerce.