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MAGES COURTESY OF THE ART ST AND NGVFARZAD OWRANG (
NEW FICTION
)
SEPTEMBER 2019
It just sort of took everything and made it a number ...
about money. I made [that painting] over 10 years ago. It
just existed. But now there’s this number attached to
it. It’s becomes athing.”
Ironically, the less Donnelly seems to care about
money the more he makes. In 2018 his works sold for a
combined A$48 million at auction (an increase of 113 per
cent from the previous year). His global influence is
growing exponentially too, thanks to Instagram (he has
2.2 million followers and the Kaws hashtag has been
used more than one million times), as well as ranges with Japanese high-street
retailer Uniqlo, one of which was responsible for a riot in China recently. “Uniqlo has
an omnipresence,” Donnelly agrees. “I have two kids and I’ll be at the playground
and there will be other kids we don’t know [wearing the pieces]. It’s strange. Uniqlo
has that sort of [reach] and that’s why I loved working with them. They have all these
stores in different countries and that lets you have a synchronised global release.”
Donnelly’s high-low approach to contemporary art has won him many fans
around the world, but he has had his critics, too. He’s been called out by curators
who prefer fine art ‘purity’, and a piece inThe Art Newspaperearlier this year accused
him of “conceptual bankruptcy”. But Donnelly is unfazed. “I always felt like what
Keith Haring and his Pop Shop did for inclusivity was really important. I think
about how that stuff got to me in my house in Jersey City. What did I get to see? And
how can I make work that disseminates in that same way?” He’s equally ambivalent
about the New York art scene, explaining that “there are really great things about it,
there are really negative things about it – it’s like any scene”.
“I get what I need out of it,” Donnelly continues. “There are a lot of artists I really
enjoy meeting and talking with and reflecting on their work, so there are lots of
positives, but then there’s a lot of BS that you have to wade through.”
Not that Donnelly needs more allies, anyway. He’s good friends with Pharrell
Williams (“We’re close,” is all he’ll say) and pals with Dior Homme creative director
Kim Jones, which explains why the designer tapped Donnelly to work on revamping
the label’s logo, as well as asking him to create a giant
sculpture made of flowers for the spring/summer ’19 show.
His wife, Julia Chiang, is also an artist, and Donnelly
plans on bringing her as well as their two girls, Sunny, five
and Lee, almost three, out to Australia later this year. His
exhibition, titled Kaws: Companionship in the Age of
Loneliness, is being billed as the most comprehensive
survey of Donnelly’s work to date and includes a selection
of sculptures, murals, products designs and paintings –
including the record-breakingKimpsonspiece on loan from
its owner. Also on display will be a special commission of
an 8.5 metre-tall bronzeCompanionsculpture titledGone,
which will become part of the gallery’s permanent collection.
When showingVog uethrough a model of the exhibition,
Donnelly makes the joke “the NGV show kicked me into
cataloguing stuff” and says he never would’ve imagined
he’d end up here. Yet in a story he did with Interview
magazine a decade ago, Donnelly said he “woke up wanting
to do [graffiti] and fell asleep thinking about it” when he
was younger. He says it’s still the same, but probably due
more to being so busy. “At this point there are a lot of balls in
the air and a lot of things to think about – how to orchestrate
these projects and get things made. It’s not just me alone. It’s
working with all different foundries and people in different
countries and trying to keep things on track.”
As for his hopes for the NGV show? “There is no hope!”
he mocks. “It’s just for people to come and see the work.
Hopefully it makes them curious to know more.”
Kaws: Companionship in the Age of Loneliness opens at
the National Gallery of Victoria on September 20. Go to
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au.“Atthis point
there are a lot
of balls in the
air and a lot
of things to
think about”VOGUE CULTURE
New Fiction (2018).