KAWS + Warhol - A Conversation with KAWS at the Andy Warhol Museum

KAWS + Warhol Installation, 2024. Photo: Bryan Conley. Warhol’s Ambulance Disaster, 1963-1964. Silkscreen ink on linen. 119 x 80 ⅛ in. KAWS, COMPANION, 2020. Bronze, paint. 17 15/16 × 94 1/2 × 47 7/8 in. Photo courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum. 

KAWS + Warhol
CONVERSATION WITH KAWS
May 18, 2024 – January 20, 2025
The Andy Warhol Museum
Pittsburgh, PA

By CLARE GEMIMA June 22, 2024

In union of contemporary iconoclastic and historical reverence, KAWS + Warhol at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, on view until January 2025,  unveils a riveting dialogue between two respectively timeless and visionary artists.  KAWS' bold contributions, highlighted by his most recent paintings, sculptures, and installations, bellow loud echoes of Warhol's commercialist ethos.

Electric, nauseatingly colorful juxtapositions explode against Warhol’s famous Brillo Boxes and lesser-known children's paintings, creating a visual symphony that explores shared cultural motifs and themes in both artists' oeuvres. Patrick Moore, curator of the show and director of The Andy Warhol Museum, emphasized the significance of the KAWS + Warhol exhibition in revitalizing Warhol’s legacy. He highlighted how it ensures Warhol’s timeless relevance among contemporary artists like KAWS and their diverse, generally adoring audiences.

In conversation with Clare Gemima, KAWS illuminates the rationale behind his strategic pairings within the exhibition, and cleanses his interviewer’s dirty mind. Reflecting on his sculptures' emotive gravity, particularly through his iconic character COMPANION, KAWS intertwines personal reflections with universal themes, skillfully depicting his "almost-taboo" compositions through child-friendly and approachable aesthetic conventions. KAWS also shares the unexpected synergies he experienced while exploring Warhol’s collective bodies of work over the last 2 years in preparation for the exhibition.

KAWS + Warhol celebrates the artistic prowess of both artists respectively, challenges conventional boundaries that span decades (and maybe eternity), and forge compelling, (albeit diabolically colliding) narratives that invite deep and exciting dialogue. The exhibition stands as a testament to each artist’s enduring influence on Warholian-hybrid art history, and unabashedly presents a myriad of ideas that explore image-making, advertising, posthumous recontextualization, and an immense amount of unglamorous capitalistic sparkle.

…I wonder what Warhol would have thought about this.

Clare Gemima: I'm curious about how you dealt with Warhol’s play on tougher, harder and I guess ‘Adults Only’ themes that popped up throughout his career. I'm not claiming you have necessarily translated these to be more friendly, but I mean, you use cereal boxes and comical characters that kids obviously love, and seem very naturally drawn to. What about disasters, diseases and the other tragedies that Warhol glorified during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s through images and ideas that weren’t so child friendly?

KAWS: You know, I think in the work sharing the space, yes, the context could be shifted, but a lot of the works are what I have made over time, and it wasn't really until I was presented with the idea to put the show together that I started to think of the similarities or the languages that could kind of connect. That's kind of a play-by-play of how we decided to place one of Warhol’s disaster series works with COMPANION. I mean, when I created that sculpture it was 2020, and it was the 20th anniversary of when I had first made COMPANION as a small toy, so he gained weight and he was definitely exhausted. I feel like the years around that time were tense, and I think fatigue was definitely very present – in my mind at least,  and I guess just the notion of giving up in a lot of ways. A face planting COMPANION laying below Ambulance Disaster… the combination suddenly becomes a lot more tragic than either work already was on its own.

Clare Gemima: I'm really curious about how you placed your various other sculptures, paintings, and cereal boxes in conversation with certain Warhol works. One striking example I would like to learn more about is why you paired Warhol’s 1964 film Blow Job with KAWSBOB 1 (2008) and KAWSBOB 2 (2007). What was the reasoning behind that decision?

KAWS: I don't know, I just think that I loved the pairing. I'm thinking about what's happening beyond the box - beyond the parameters of these canvases. You know, Blowjob, I guess the title is a dead giveaway, but a lot of people will see that movie and not really understand that it's a celebrated title or what its about, and I feel like there's something when you're looking at a painting that could exist that's similarly beyond the immediate understanding of it.

Clare Gemima: COMPANION is facing away from the Warhol film in complete… shame, blowjob shame – like devastation.

KAWS: You’re definitely projecting…

I mean, they all come from different places, you know? I know COMPANION carries the aesthetic of the cartoon, but I use it in a way that any sort of sculptor would use a figure to communicate whatever they're feeling, their fate, frustration or loss. I think for me it was really just about pause. There was something I saw recently about these kids being separated from their parents at the border, and there was a picture of one of them sitting by themselves. There was a slice of pizza on the floor next to them, and for some reason it had such a devastating effect, and it triggered me to tap into that route and create a COMPANION sitting cross-legged. A lot of the work comes from my personal space, my own experience, or observing experiences. But then, you know, I know these characters are very accessible and inviting.

 KAWS + Warhol Installation, 2024. Photo: Bryan Conley. Photo courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum.

Clare Gemima: They're really friendly. It's interesting seeing people interact with them.

KAWS: Yeah, I mean, even like my severed head, I made that when I was 33, and at the time I was having one of my first sort of New York shows, and I built 33 in different colors and it was almost like an offering. I was imagining them disseminating into the world – being collected, being not collected, being resold, you know. I just thought, here's this offering of me at this age, at this moment, and I wanted to watch how it transformed over the years. But even that, you know, if you look under the neck of the sculpture, it's severed. But at a glance, it's not offensive because it has this candy-coating. So it's like... it's like your black painted nails.

Clare Gemima: Right, so deeply, deeply morbid thoughts that coalesce into an assortment of approachable, positive, albeit depressed figures. Is COMPANION a shadow of yours? Is that a complete projection too?

KAWS: It is a complete projection, I would say. It was definitely not intentional, but it's something I can use over and over just the way I do it. I don't know, I was never really interested in recreating people in sculpture, but to me, COMPANION is interchangeable as a person.

Clare Gemima: Did you ever think, say, as the 33-year-old that made the severed head that you would be in conversation or context with Andy Warhol, ever?

KAWS: No, it's not something I had thought of, or was thinking about when I was younger. And Warhol will always exist, so you forget that artists are people sometimes based on the scale of their presence, dead or alive.

KAWS x Warhol, 2024. Warhol’s Brillo Soap Pads Box, 1964. Silkscreen ink and house paint on plywood, with KAW’s cereal box wall. Photo courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum.

Clare Gemima: I'm sure people also forget that you're a person.

KAWS: Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I want them to forget I'm a person. It's so much better for me, I think… for my work to exist in the world. I don't really need to be like, “famous.” Not me. 

Clare Gemima: Ironic that the first time I spoke to you, you were hanging out with Jeff Koons at Peter Saul’s opening at the New Museum in 2019, just months before Covid hit. I noticed you had contributed several pieces of his to the retrospective, and I am curious about your relationship with him.

KAWS: Peter is somebody I've always loved. I started collecting when I started selling, so as somebody bought my work, I had the money to buy.

Clare Gemima: That was an instant decision to sell then buy – these actions happened in tandem?

KAWS: It was more like a decision to buy, and then figure out a way to pay and sell. So I wish it was like I made money and spent money, but it was more like I spent money and then eventually made money back to pay off those debts. And I just think at the time, you know, 15 years ago, it wasn't really in a position to be able to buy it. I would buy works on paper by him and then eventually his paintings. The fact that key '60s, and '70s paintings were still in the market and accessible was shocking. So I bought one.

KAWS, TOGETHER, 2016. Photo courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum.

Clare Gemima: Returning to Andy Warhol, considering a hypothetical collaboration with him in this show, if he were alive and working alongside you, is there a question you would have liked to ask him?

KAWS: (Laughing) Yeah! - Where do you want to hang? I would love to have that opportunity. I mean, that would be a dream, you know?

Clare Gemima: That's such a great question.

KAWS: Yeah, it's like on the ground, what are we doing? I obviously have a lot of respect for him, and I tried to create a show where, you know, his works exist in a way that I feel okay with… But who knows, somebody's going to tell me differently anyway.

Clare Gemima: So, how do you filter through all of the feedback you receive?

KAWS: I don't.

Clare Gemima: You don't?

KAWS: It comes, of course. I catch stuff that comes across and strikes me, but sometimes it doesn't. None of it I can control, so why should I try? I don't really have the energy.

Clare Gemima: But does any of that feed the next iteration of your work?

KAWS: No, because then I would be lost. If I was using feedback as guidance, I feel as though it would build a map using a million crossroads, and I’d never be able to get to the right place. WM