KAWS
KAWS, Astro Boy (2012)
2012

Name: KAWS, Astro Boy (2012)
Brand: KAWS
Rating: 4.9 (9 reviews)

About the Item

The ‘Astro Boy’ in vivid color was re-imagined by KAWS in collaboration with Original Fake and created by Medicom Toy. This collectable art figurine is made of vinyl and is part of the extremely limited edition of only 500 created in 2013. ‘Astro Boy’ is an iconic cartoon character beloved by many for his heroism and space adventures, KAWS added his signature motif to the character's original persona to give him a bashful appearance and X’s on his white gloved hands. The piece comes in the original boxed packaging from the manufacturer and is stamped on the bottom of foot. The ‘Astro Boy’ in color comes with the Arton seal of approval for authenticity, quality, and exquisite condition. Arton Contemporary is a gallery located on Madison Avenue, specializing in the Contemporary Masters such as Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and among many others. Arton Contemporary brings a fresh perspective with advising services and has been a trusted source for rare blue-chip art acquisitions for the past 16 years. We put our clients first with focus on transparency, dedication and unmatched premium services. Questions on this piece? Send us a note or call us directly. KAWS, born in 1974, is a New-York based artist who first gained international attention by designing limited edition toys and clothing. He practiced his now iconic style as a young graffiti artist who chose his moniker, KAWS, and later said of his name, "when your whole art is based on the lettering you choose, you kinda figure out what ones work together. I just liked the shapes of the K, A, W, S". KAWS grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey. He studied at the School of Visual Arts, New York, graduating with a BFA in 1996. Upon graduating, he began working as an animator for Disney, contributing to films and TV shows including 101 Dalmatians, Daria, and Doug. His passion for graffiti art led him to the re-working of advertisements, ‘subvertising’ a counter-culture to the mainstream. Commercial advertisers, interested in the street culture and visual communication, liked his bold style and KAWS was asked to rework their advertisements on bus shelters and billboards around the city. From his start to present day, KAWS and commercialism have become inextricably intertwined. In 1999, KAWS designed his first toy for the Japanese company Bounty Hunter, a vinyl figure of rounded Mickey Mouse shape with x-ed out eyes, a motif which has now become a signature due to its popularity. KAWS has since been invited to collaborate with many other streetwear labels and designers, such as Nike, Uniqlo, Dior and Commes Des Garcons. In early 2019, his painting THE KAWS ALBUM (2005) sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong auction for a record-breaking $14.8 million. The piece is a take on The Simpsons The Yellow Album, which itself is an impression of the iconic cover sleeve for the 1967 Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, originally co-designed by artist Peter Blake (b. 1932). In THE KAWS ALBUM, each figure has been replaced with a character from his ‘Kimpsons’ series. KAWS is now recognized globally for his large-scale public art installations, which see his subversive cartoon characters inflated to gigantic proportions. Most notable among these installations was Holiday (2019) which floated in the Hong Kong harbor during Art Basel Hong Kong. KAWS is now an internationally recognized and multi-faceted artist with work that can be found in the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the Rosenblum Collection, Paris. To learn more about this artist and see other available artworks, please visit our website.

Creator:
KAWS (American)
Creation Year:
2012
Dimensions:
Height: 16.5 in (41.91 cm)Width: 8.25 in (20.96 cm)Depth: 6.5 in (16.51 cm)
Medium:
Vinyl
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Gallery Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU83515541942

Shop All KAWS

KAWS

In the beginning, Brian Donnelly was just a kid from Jersey City, New Jersey, who got into the graffiti thing. KAWS was his tag, chosen simply because he liked the way it looked. Today, KAWS creates all kinds of art — there are KAWS figures and toys, sculptures and colorful drawings, paintings and prints that appropriate pop phenomena like the Smurfs, the Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants.

In the late 1990s, the artist, a 1996 graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, was making a living as an illustrator for the animation studio Jumbo Pictures. Like young Hansel and Gretel with their trail of crumbs, KAWS would mark the morning route to his downtown Manhattan office with “subvertising,” “interrupting” fashion advertisements by adding his colorful character Bendy, its sinuous length sliding playfully around the likes of a Calvin Klein perfume bottle or supermodel Christy Turlington.

These creations gained a following, to the point where work posted in the morning would disappear by lunchtime. Even in those early days, KAWS was hot on the resale market.

“When I was doing graffiti,” he once explained, “it meant nothing to me to make paintings if I wasn’t reaching people.”

Instead of seeking entrée to the elite New York art world (which, frankly, wasn’t looking for a street artist anyway), KAWS moved to Japan, where a flourishing youth culture welcomed visionaries like him.

In 1999, he partnered with Bounty Hunter, a Japanese toy and streetwear brand, to release his first toy. Companion — an eight-inch-tall vinyl reimagining of Mickey Mouse, with a skull-and-crossbones head and trademark XX eyes — debuted with a limited run of 500. It sold out quickly.

Companion was the first of more than 130 toy designs, which came to include such characters as Chum, Blitz, Be@rbrick, BFF and Milo, each immediately recognizable as KAWS figures by their XX eyes. Fans have proved insatiable. In 2017, MoMA’s online store announced the availability of a limited supply of KAWS Companion figures; as avid collectors logged on to stake their claim, the website crashed — multiple times.

Companion is the most visible of the KAWS posse, appearing over the past decade in new postures and combinations in monumental KAWS statues and other works. These include Along the Way (2013), an 18-foot-tall wooden sculpture of two Companions leaning on each other for support; Together (2016), two Companions in a friendly embrace, which debuted during an exhibition of KAWS’s work at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in Texas; and KAWS:HOLIDAY (2018), a 92-foot-long inflatable Companion floating on its back in Seoul’s Seokchon Lake. The sculptures were re-created as toys, blurring the lines between art and commerce.

KAWS’s visual language may be drawn from cartoons, but his work doesn’t necessarily evoke childlike joy.

“My figures are not always reflecting the idealistic cartoon view that I grew up on,” he explains in the catalogue for the Fort Worth exhibition. “Companion is more real in dealing with contemporary human circumstances . . . . I think when I’m making work it also often mirrors what’s going on with me at that time.”

KAWS's résumé reads like a record of major 21st-century pop-culture moments. It includes his work with streetwear brands like A Bathing Ape and Supreme; his design for the cover of Kanye West’s 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak; and his collaboration with designer Kim Jones on the Dior Homme Spring/Summer 2019 collection, Jones’s debut as the fashion brand’s creative director.

Materials

Bronze

Materials

Screen

How to Spot a Fake KAWS Figure

KAWS art toys have developed an avid audience in recent decades, and as in any robust collectible market, counterfeiters have followed the mania. Of course, you don’t have to worry about that on 1stDibs, where all our sellers are highly vetted.