KAWS
“Do you know that series of package paintings that I did? That was because I saw that these guys in Japan were collecting toys. I had friends that were spending $3,000 on a Star Wars prototype figure. They weren’t collecting art, they were collecting toys. So I did those package paintings where I mass-produced the packaging around the painting, but the painting itself was done individually. That was my way of bridging the gap between those two worlds. Because I realized that these guys are absolute connoisseurs of the stuff they collect. They can look at a toy and say, Oh, this is a 76. It came out in three versions. It occurred to me that that kind of obsessive collecting isn’t any different than art.”
2002
"Do You Know" by KAWS bridges the worlds of fine art and consumer collecting culture through acrylic on canvas encased in plastic packaging and paper. Inspired by the obsessive precision of toy collectors in Japan, KAWS mass-produced the packaging surrounding each individually hand-painted canvas, challenging traditional distinctions between high art and popular collectibles. The work provocatively suggests that the connoisseurship applied to limited-edition toys is no different from that of fine art collecting.
- Medium
- acrylic on canvas, plastic packaging, paper
- Spotted At
- Auction House · Phillips
🔨 Auction Lot
20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale
November 26, 2018
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