{"id":302566,"date":"2025-11-20T05:12:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T05:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/302566\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T05:12:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T05:12:17","slug":"review-kaws-eyeless-at-sfmoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/302566\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: KAWS, eyeless at SFMOMA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pop artist Brian \u201cKAWS\u201d Donnelly would have you think that family is important to him. After all, his first major West Coast show is titled \u201cKAWS: Family<\/a>,\u201d currently on display at SF MoMA. Promotional materials show sculptures of his un-mouthed characters posed for a family portrait. Plus, Donnelly is a married father of two<\/a>, so one would imagine he has something to say on the subject. Yet the impression one gets from the new show is that, for KAWS, family is about the art of marketing.<\/p>\n

The Brooklyn-based illustrator and sculptor has occasionally been compared to Andy Warhol due to Donnelly\u2019s similar appropriation of pop culture imagery. But where Warhol famously recontextualized pop ephemera, Donnelly\u2019s work merely latches onto it. Whereas his British peer Banksy subverts pop culture iconography, KAWS is all too eager to lend his brand to official corporate sponsors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ABrian Donnelly. Photo by Shaniqwa Jarvis<\/p>\n

Donnelly\u2019s priorities are evident upon entering SF MoMA\u2019s fourth floor, which houses the exhibition. The first piece is the interactive \u201cMake a Friend for BFF\u201d game, where touchscreens encourage children to create a funny playmate for the fuzzy quasi-Muppet. Steps away is a triptych of untitled photos documenting KAWS\u2019 graffiti roots. (Donnelly adopted the name KAWS because he liked the way it looked on graffiti.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his younger days, Donnelly would snatch subway advertisements, integrate his own characters and then replace the advertisements, making it seem as if his designs were always a part of the image. It was the brash move of an impulsive youngster, as well as the starting point for this show\u2019s real overarching theme, which is stenciled on the wall: \u201cPop Culture and the Art of Appropriation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Donnelly makes no apologies for appropriating mainstream staples. In fact, he wears the term \u201cappropriation\u201d like a badge of honor. During the press preview, he took pride in the way his \u201cKimpsons\u201d illustrations, which take up an entire section of this exhibition, are instantly recognizable as Matt Groenig\u2019s billion-dollar creation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He recalled creating the series in Japan in the early-2000s, and how the paintings\u2013featuring his trademark \u201cdead eyes\u201d were the only thing that didn\u2019t represent a cultural barrier between him and his local hosts: \u201cI didn\u2019t know the language, they didn\u2019t know a lot of English, but everyone knew Homer!\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of \u201cKAWS: Family\u201d comes off as a tribute to his having moved from making unofficial fan art to official commissions. The \u201cBranding and Collaboration\u201d section features display cases dedicated to his 2020 line of Nikes, as well as an entire wall dedicated to his 2022 General Mills collaboration for their monster cereals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AKAWS, SPACE, 2021; \u00a9 KAWS<\/p>\n

A section called \u201cSpace\u201d features his design for Kid Cudi\u2019s 2022 \u201cMan on the Moon\u201d vinyl box set alongside an official KAWS Moonman from the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. In each commission, very little redesigning takes place. The only apparent difference is that the familiar characters now feature the cloud-like \u201cKAWS head\u201d with its puffy ears, lack of mouth, and Xs in the place of eyes.<\/p>\n

The few times the work does venture into personal territory, it leaves you wanting more. For instance, the paintings \u201cHopeless Horizon\u201d (2022) and \u201cLost Future\u201d (2023) openly illustrate Donnelly\u2019s sense of isolation during the COVID shelter-in-place of 2020. Both feature the character CHUMS (KAWS\u2019 take on the Michelin Man) trapped behind neon-colored prison bars. The similarly-themed sculpture \u201cSeparated\u201d (2021, bronze and paint) features the Mickey Mouse-inspired Companion huddled on the floor, crying into his hands. These few pieces deliver a personal insight that\u2019s otherwise lacking among all the wall-sized boxes of Reese\u2019s Puffs from 2023 that take up the most real estate.<\/p>\n

\"AKAWS, SEPARATED, 2021; \u00a9 KAWS<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no mistaking Donnelly\u2019s talent. Quite the contrary, one of the highlights of the show is an Instagram video showing him painstakingly painting one of his large prints by hand. But aside from admirable craft, \u201cKAWS: Family\u201d is less a representation of the artist\u2019s ideas of the family unit and more a hall of fame to his own success in the marketplace. Had the show explored the rise of a street artist to a recognizable brand, it would have had something. Instead, it\u2019s mostly a Technicolor collection of lucrative corporate appropriation of street-level talent.<\/p>\n

\"AKAWS, CHUM, 2002; \u00a9 KAWS; Photo by Farzad Owrang\"AKAWS, THE PORTRAIT, 2021; \u00a9 KAWS; Photo by Farzad Owrang\"AKAWS, GONE, 2020; \u00a9 KAWS<\/p>\n

SF MoMA\u2019s \u201cKAWS: Family<\/a>\u201d runs from November 20 through May 3, 2026 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pop artist Brian \u201cKAWS\u201d Donnelly would have you think that family is important to him. After all, his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-302566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}