Rendered on a monumental scale with boldy defined forms and rich, saturated colour, UNTITLED exemplifies KAWS’s investigations into the legacy of Pop culture. The present work depicts a cartoonish figure whose form belies the artist’s propensity to appropriate celebrated fictional characters throughout his oeuvre. Epitomising the American artist and designer’s playful dynamism and intriguing aesthetic, the painting is marked with KAWS’s signature ‘X’ eyes, a sinister yet fascinating hallmark of his practice which comments on our image-saturated and consumer-driven world. The product of a society overwhelmed by an endless abundance of images, posters, cartoons and adverts, KAWS’s paintings hold a mirror up to our surroundings, compelling his viewers to reflect upon the world they live in. As curator Michael Auping attests, “KAWS is not just referring to pop culture, he is making it” (Michael Auping, ‘America’s Cartoon Mind’ in: Exh. Cat., Fort Worth, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Where the End Starts, 2017, p. 63).

KAWS, who worked as an animator for Disney before establishing his artistic practice, cites mainstream cartoons as a central influence, explaining that he “found it weird how infused a cartoon could become in people’s lives; the impact it could have, compared to regular politics” (KAWS cited in: Murray Healy, ‘Graffiti Artist Turned Gallery Artist Turned Art Toy Maker: KAWS’, Pop, February 2007, pp. 260-65). The relationship between America’s cartoon culture and high art can be traced back beyond the conception of Pop art. As Auping further observes, many of America’s pioneers of abstraction in the 1940s and 1950s owe their artistic breakthroughs to the canon of cartoons. He writes: “For that generation, one of the quickest ways to learn how to draw and create dramatic effects through pose and gesture was through illustration and the comics. Willem de Kooning studied ‘applied art’… Franz Kline and David Smith made cartoons as teenagers, honing their draftsmanship and compositional skills… Barnett Newman was fascinated by Disney’s colour extravaganza Fantasia” (Michael Auping cited in: Op. cit., p. 65). Auping goes on to argue that: “Cartoons are the closest figurative equivalent to abstraction… looking at KAWS’s paintings is to witness someone who very naturally approaches cartoons and abstraction as symbiotic languages of visual tropes” (Ibid., p. 71). KAWS’s large-scale paintings indeed toy with abstraction, as extensive, pristine planes of colour accent his compositions. Upon close looking, the viewer may only surmise abstract passages of pigment; it is only when regarding the work from a distance that KAWS’s immaculate figuration becomes apparent. Like animated cartoon imagery, KAWS deftly removes all trace of his hand, instead executing clean lines and saturated colours with the exacting precision of commercial fabrication. This manner of execution stems from KAWS’s years as a graffiti artist, when he modified billboards and other advertisements with such unerring skill that the additions would seamlessly integrate into the original imagery.

While KAWS draws from contemporary sources, his work also builds upon the legacy of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and more recently, Jeff Koons. Indeed, KAWS questions the consumerist tendencies of modern society through a boldly defined visual practice. KAWS’s own impact on art and visual culture within an image-saturated world has reached immense proportions, and UNTITLED encapsulates an oeuvre that freely channels the lexicons of cartoon and draftsmanship, high and low art, design and popular culture.