KAWS is the working name of Brian Donnelly, an American artist born in Jersey City in 1974. He started as a graffiti writer, spent the 1990s repainting advertisements in New York bus shelters and phone booths, and became famous for Companion, a cartoon figure with crossed-out eyes. In 2019 one of his paintings sold for about 14.8 million dollars.
Most people meet his work as a toy, a hoodie or a giant balloon. It began as a break-in.
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Shortly after he arrived in New York, a friend handed Donnelly a tool that opened the locked glass panels of phone booths and bus shelters. He lifted out the posters, took them home, and painted his own characters over the models. Then he slid them back into the frames and left them for commuters to find.
Nobody had asked for it and nobody paid for it, and the city answered anyway. Collectors began prying the reworked panels loose to keep them. Years later he explained to Interview magazine why the street suited him: "When you paint over ads, it clicks."
Then the story jumps. In April 2019, at Sotheby's in Hong Kong, a painting by that same man sold for about 14.8 million dollars, nearly fifteen times its high estimate. It was a version of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper cover drawn with characters from The Simpsons. And the figure behind all of it, Companion, was not first made in New York at all.
What You'll Discover
What his name really stands for.
Who handed him the key.
Where Companion first appeared.
Who ordered the record painting.
Why a giant lay down in Hong Kong.