From the streets to museums, the artist KAWS continues to reshape the relationship between contemporary art, pop culture, and international collecting.
How did the artist KAWS transition from city walls to international museums?
In recent decades, the artist KAWS, born Brian Donnelly, has gone from being a writer to a global protagonist, with a rare ability to speak to very diverse audiences. Young people line up for his $50 T-shirts with Uniqlo, celebrities commission much more expensive custom works, while trophy collectors pay millions for the paintings.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is currently hosting a major retrospective, the final stop of a tour in three institutions. The exhibition presents the image of an artist who methodically builds a diversified operation, combining branding strategies with calibrated moves to strengthen his critical legitimacy.
As part of the exhibition project, the artist designed 1,000 personalized SFMOMA memberships signed by KAWS, priced at $300 each. The offer included a complimentary KAWS figure and limited edition cards. Collector Ronnie Pirovino called the operation “a brilliant move,” stating that the fifty-one-year-old allows the museum “to truly benefit from the audience that will come to see the exhibition.”
Museums are eagerly seeking such a broad audience, but at the same time, the artist benefits from institutional recognition. This type of consecration can contribute to the challenge, far from simple, of keeping an author’s market stable over the long term.
What has happened to KAWS’s auction market from 2019 to today?
In the auction segment, KAWS’s journey has been particularly volatile. In 2019, when the 2005 painting The Kaws Album – a reinterpretation of the famous Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles in Simpsons version – reached the record of $14.7 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, auction houses totaled $112.9 million on his works, according to the Artnet Price Database.
In 2023, the auction volume dropped to $7.72 million, the lowest figure of the last decade. Right at the peak of the 2019 boom, KAWS ended the collaboration with gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin, known for representing market stars like Takashi Murakami and Maurizio Cattelan. “Considering all the pressure, this collaboration has come to an end,” Perrotin had declared, rather cryptically.
The artist chose instead to work with Skarstedt, a more sober gallery specializing in high-end works on the secondary market. In one of the New York locations, for example, an Édouard Vuillard is displayed, a figure far removed from KAWS’s imagery, emphasizing the refined positioning of the space.
Despite the decline on the auction front, the artist has probably become even more known on a global scale. Moreover, the extremely articulated nature of his activities suggests that his overall enterprise is in full health, considering that, in most cases, artists do not receive any percentage on auction resales.
What is the impact of the KAWS exhibition at SFMOMA on the public?
Attendance data confirms the reach achieved by KAWS. By mid-March, after four months of opening, the SFMOMA had recorded 106,000 visitors for the exhibition. The total is lower than that of the recent retrospective dedicated to Ruth Asawa, which reached 174,000 attendees, but the KAWS exhibition attracted the largest number of children and teenagers since the Andy Warhol exhibition in 2019, the museum reported.
Daryl McCurdy, curatorial associate for architecture and design at SFMOMA, explained that the institution was looking for a project to occupy the exhibition space after the Asawa show. “There were big shoes to fill,” she recounted, “but the KAWS setup was already ready, and we decided to proceed. People really like KAWS, it was almost obvious.”
A view of the “KAWS: Family” installation at the museum, documented by photographer Jason Schmidt, clearly conveys the immersive dimension of the setup, designed to engage a cross-sectional audience. The exhibition thus becomes an additional lever to consolidate the artist’s image even beyond the narrow circle of collectors.
How has KAWS built such a diversified operation?
The enduring interest in KAWS over time is also explained by the iconic strength of his characters, immediately recognizable cartoon figures. The artist regularly draws on protagonists from universes like the Smurfs, the Simpsons, and Sesame Street, visual languages that resonate both with younger audiences and those who grew up with those series.
Donnelly is a child of that culture. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1974, across the river from Manhattan, as a teenager he would cross the Hudson to leave the tag KAWS on city walls. He chose those four letters because, he recounted, he liked how they combined. He started by intervening on walls and facades in downtown New York, then moved on to inserting playful and cartoon figures in street advertisements and bus shelters.
Among the works exhibited at SFMOMA, Untitled (Space Chain) from 2021 stands out, a white gold and diamond chain commissioned by rapper Kid Cudi. The installation, photographed by Eileen Kinsella, demonstrates KAWS’s ability to navigate between jewelry, music, and visual art, while simultaneously strengthening his symbolic capital.
According to McCurdy, the emotional strength of his characters is subtle but incisive. “He poses the figures in very generic but at the same time extremely expressive ways,” she observed. The most evident example is the seated Companion, crouched, with its face hidden by its hands. “It’s heartbreaking,” adds the curator. The work, titled Separated, comments on the separation of children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
How important are commercial collaborations in KAWS’s strategy?
Another key element is the ability to weave collaborations with brands and artists of enormous cultural weight. Over the years, KAWS has worked with mass-market brands like Nike and Uniqlo, but also with high-end maisons like Christian Dior and Comme des Garçons. He has also designed album covers for Clipse and Kanye West, in a period before the controversies that engulfed the rapper.
In the SFMOMA exhibition, a showcase displays a gem-studded gold figure made specifically for Kid Cudi, another example of how the artist exploits synergies with music to expand his reach. However, part of the art world views this mix of luxury, merchandising, and art with suspicion, highlighting how few major institutions have included his works in permanent collections.
Advisor Rachel Green, who has assisted several clients in purchasing KAWS works, defends the coherence of the path. In her opinion, the early experiments between graffiti and “subvertising,” or the ironic appropriation of advertisements at bus stops, constitute the direct matrix of what the artist creates today. “KAWS has become a household name, but he continues to move from that original starting point,” she states.
How does KAWS use collecting to strengthen his legitimacy?
In recent years, the artist has convinced several skeptics by reinvesting a significant portion of his earnings in purchasing avant-garde works, which he regularly lends to museums and exhibition centers. In 2024, the Drawing Center in New York presented the exhibition “The Way I See It,” a selection of about 400 drawings by 60 artists from KAWS’s collection.
New York Magazine critic Jerry Saltz called the exhibition “so exceptional that I now see his art in a radically different way, as part of a much larger project, inseparable from the rest.” The article bore an eloquent title: “Maybe KAWS Is Not So Bad After All.”
“I recommended that Drawing Center exhibition to my clients,” recalls Green, arguing that it revealed his “interesting gaze, and a particular attention to the character of the figures.” According to the consultant, KAWS’s creative process is more complex than it appears at first glance: he works through image layering and proceeds through numerous editing phases.
Was the 2019 peak a bubble or a new market standard?
During the 2019 auction peak, some observers interpreted the KAWS phenomenon as a possible speculative bubble. That year, advisor and author Josh Baer stated: “If you want to tell me that his market is great, be prepared to remove one or two zeros in twenty years when you want to resell. It’s that kind of art.”
Recently contacted again, Baer confirmed his position, writing that “those who bought the work with the Simpsons probably now doubt that purchase,” referring to the record canvas The Kaws Album, the Beatles–Simpsons mashup sold for about $14.1 million. The gap between the price paid then and the current auction results fuels the debate among insiders.
On the primary market, a representative of Skarstedt communicated that prices today start at about $180,000 for paintings and $600,000 for sculptures, with increases based on size. Overall, the high end remains well guarded, even in a context of greater caution compared to the peaks of the recent past.
Is it the right time to enter the KAWS market?
Several experts consulted suggest that, since 2019, KAWS has sought to regain control over his market, reducing production and focusing on institutional exhibitions like the one at SFMOMA. According to Pirovino, in 2019 “a handful of individuals were vying for the trophies,” generating a hyperbolic dynamic in the highest segment, because works of that quality had never appeared at auction before.
The waters have calmed also thanks to the artist’s choices, continues the collector, who today believes “it’s the best time to enter the KAWS market as a collector willing to ponder their decisions.” In other words, the phenomenon is no longer just a dizzying race for records, but a field where it becomes possible to evaluate works, prices, and prospects with greater clarity.
Overall, the KAWS case shows how an artist can move between street, institutions, collaboration with global brands, and sophisticated collecting, keeping the attention of the public and the market high. For those observing the evolution of the relationship between art and the cultural industry, his path remains a privileged laboratory.
image credits by Mogli Maureal
As expert in digital marketing, Amelia began working in the fintech sector in 2014 after writing her thesis on Bitcoin technology. Previously author for several international crypto-related magazines and CMO at Eidoo. She is now the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Cryptonomist and Econique.
She is also a marketing teacher at Digital Coach in Milan and she published a book about NFTs for the Italian publishing house Mondadori, while she is also helping artists and company to entering in the sector. As advisor, Amelia is also involved in metaverse-related project such as The Nemesis and OVER.
