KAWS - New Now New York Tuesday, March 12, 2024 | Phillips

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  • Mass media aesthetics merge with psychological realism in KAWS’ AGREED, painted in 2011. Characteristic of his work, this painting appropriates populist imagery to explore the human experience in a media-saturated world. Since 1990, KAWS has crafted a cast of characters drawn from popular culture’s iconography. In particular, however, the artist alters these vibrant animated characters to produce Modernist caricatures which appear confrontational, isolated, or fearful. Subverting the childish connotations of cartoons, the artist transforms the characters into serious reflections of the human psyche. Thus, KAWS captures the tragic elements of modern humanity in visually dynamic and comically ironic imagery.

     

    Inspired by the 1999 animated character SpongeBob SquarePants, KAWSBOB is a recurring character in KAWS’ lexicon. KAWSBOB serves as a “comic anti-hero”: an avatar of the 21st century whose perceived angst provides commentary on the contemporary zeitgeist and reacts to its absurdity.i Peering from the darkness with X’d-out eyes, the character appears almost indignant and disillusioned, the furrowed brow and hostile expression communicating a visceral cynicism. In KAWS’s appropriation of SpongeBob, he refigures the character from “relentlessly Pollyannaish cartoon character” into a being that responds to the conditions of society with extreme alarm.ii KAWSBOB’s transgressive persona – juxtaposed against the iconic SpongeBob – heightens the psychological gravity of the scene: the cartoonish world of the painting becomes a humorous but poignant mirror of the real world, where inner depth can lead to personal turmoil.

     

    A detail of the present work.

    The emotional intensity of KAWSBOB is in part so effective because its visual language recalls the techniques of Pop art. AGREED uses the vernacular, mass-culture icon of SpongeBob to produce a recognizable and accessible subject. In the same way that Pop art’s appropriation of consumer culture disobeyed the tenets of fine art, this work is aesthetically radical. Borrowing from advertisements and comics, Warhol and Lichtenstein were the precursors of KAWS communicative graphic style.iii Yet KAWS has developed a distinctly hybrid approach which results from his years as a graffiti artist, his formal training in painting and sculpture, as well as his experience as a background animator at Disney’s studios.iv These experiences all coalesce to create an art form that is capable of communicating with a near-universal audience and displays the convergence between popular culture and high art. 

     

    Akin to Andy Warhol, KAWS maintains a close affiliation with celebrity culture, accepting commissions from figures like Pharell Williams who in fact first commissioned KAWSBOB. In an interview, KAWS stated that the character ultimately became recurrent in his oeuvre because: 

    “I was taken by the forms. And as I investigated it more, I realized all these similarities between SpongeBob and tons of earlier cartoons from the thirties and forties, up to the present…I think that's why you see SpongeBob and it instantly feels familiar.” v

    In AGREED, the artist exploits this sense of familiarity; KAWSBOB’s interiority is juxtaposed against SpongeBob’s one-dimensionality, underscoring the nature of humanity as fundamentally complex. In humanizing the character, the artist characterizes humanity.

     

     Michael Rooks, KAWS: DOWN TIME, exh. cat., High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2012, p. 18.

    ii  Ibid, p. 19.

    iii  Andrea Karnes, KAWS: WHERE THE END STARTS, exh. cat., Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, p. 39.

    iv Ibid, p. 74.

    v  Brian Donnelly, quoted in Andrea Karnes, KAWS: WHERE THE END STARTS, exh. cat., Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, p. 83.

    • Provenance

      Friedman Benda, New York
      Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2012)
      Sotheby's, New York, May 19, 2023, lot 910
      Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

    • Artist Biography

      KAWS

      American • 1974

      To understand the work of KAWS is to understand his roots in the skateboard and graffiti crews of New York City. Brian Donnelly chose KAWS as his moniker to tag city streets beginning in the 1990s, and quickly became a celebrated standout in the scene. Having swapped spray paint for explorations in fine art spanning sculpture, painting and collage, KAWS has maintained a fascination with classic cartoons, including Garfield, SpongeBob SquarePants and The Simpsons, and reconfigured familiar subjects into a world of fantasy. 

      Perhaps he is most known for his larger-than-life fiberglass sculptures that supplant the body of Mickey Mouse onto KAWS' own imagined creatures, often with 'x'-ed out eyes or ultra-animated features. However, KAWS also works frequently in neon and vivid paint, adding animation and depth to contemporary paintings filled with approachable imagination. There is mass appeal to KAWS, who exhibits globally and most frequently in Asia, Europe and the United States.  

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AGREED

signed and dated "KAWS..11" on the reverse
acrylic on canvas
diameter 60 in. (152.4 cm)
Painted in 2011.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$120,000 - 180,000 

Sold for $139,700

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
T +1 212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com
 

New Now

New York Auction 12 March 2024