KAWS B. 1974 Untitled

Footnotes

Provenance
Artist studio
POP Fine Art Gallery, Los Angeles
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibited
More Gallery, KAWS Giswil, Switzerland, 9 June to 26 August 2013

無題
壓克力畫布
2013年作

背面簽名：KAWS 13

來源
藝術家工作室
洛杉磯POP藝術畫廊
現藏家直接購自上述畫廊

展覽
「KAWS Giswil」，More畫廊，瑞士，2013年6月9日至8月26日

The appropriation of comic book characters is hardly new to contemporary art world. Artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Mel Ramos began transfiguring and elevating these popular icons to canvas and thus to an arguably higher form of art as early as 1960. These masters of the Pop Art movement paved the way for future generations of artists to employ both comic motifs and production techniques which would echo that of the original creators. As the much acclaimed curator and critic Germano Celant stated in his introductory essay to KAWS's 2010 retrospective exhibition at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, KAWS and his peers are "Taking their cue[s] from Andy Warhol, they work in three hundred and sixty degrees—that is, their work implies the involvement of society and a democratization of images and forms, of products, and of the creative process. They announce a mode of communication that contains all the arts within it and has command of all time-periods, in a combination of procedures that are not posited as unique but remain in a state of continual alternation with one another."1


Despite some of the possible visual and/or ideological similarities between the disparate generations' take on cartoons and pop cultures, the work of KAWS is actually quite radically different in terms of its purpose and meaning. While earlier generation artists' works were more of a general commentary on popular culture, mass media and commercial production, KAWS' work is far more personal and introspective—the appropriation of comic imagery is merely the vehicle he uses to address his own ideas and feelings. He notes, "For me, all my work is personal. It is an accumulation of things that create my art. I am who I am, and I've never said to myself that I would become a famous graffiti artist or a famous painter. I just painted on the outside and I'm doing it inside."2

Having grown up in the late 1970s and 80s, KAWS was utterly surrounded by contemporary commercial, graphic and cartoon imagery; it was only natural that this would be the basis for his work. The wonder of cartoons and comics is their uncanny capacity to simultaneously reflect an accurate and abstract portrayal of human emotion and condition. Michael Auping quite astutely reflects, "Because of their short narratives, cartoons are designed to simplify human emotions: happy/angry, good/bad. KAWS introduces more complex and subtle feelings, such as melancholy, disgust, pride and envy. This is existentialism absorbed into a cartoon world. In his own perverse way, the artist has turned the famous mouse and other cartoon favorites back into degenerate people with flaws."3

Apart from the ideological and conceptual differences between KAWS's work and that of his predecessors, there is also an equally, if not more important, dissimilarity which is the actual style and compositional manner in which KAWS appropriates his imagery. While Lichtenstein's Popeye, 1961, Warhol's Superman, 1961 or Mel Ramos' Batman #2, 1961 quite directly appropriate and replicate the original imagery they are derived from, KAWS quite blatantly deconstructs and then reconstructs his subjects; altering the heads and faces, creating more dramatic body language and tightly cropping his compositions. In this way he is actually more acutely and significantly appropriating the cartoons by imbuing them with his personal touch and meaning.

In the present work, KAWS takes on one of his most favorite subjects, SpongeBob Squarepants, or KAWSBob as these works are also called. In an interview with the actor and collector Tobey Maguire, KAWS states, "I started doing SpongeBob paintings for Pharrell. Then I started doing smaller paintings, which got more abstract. And SpongeBob was something I wanted to do because graphically I love the shapes."4 Indeed this is a frequent subject for the artist, however, the present work is substantially more dramatic and impactful than others from the series. Here, KAWS zooms in and crops so closely that all we see is a single eye, with his trademark X over the pupil, which while quite abstract is also clearly recognizable as an eye belonging to SpongeBob. The sense of impending danger, dread or anxiety he creates by this intense composition is only heightened by his use of an exclusively red palette and the enormous scale on which the work is presented.

Speaking to KAWS's work and his continued exploration of pop imagery and culture, Auping notes, "His process and his worldwide brand take this cartoon assimilation to a new level. Warhol said he wanted to be a machine. KAWS might say he wants to be a cartoon, an embodiment of the youthful stasis of cartoon characters who never age or die."5

在當代藝術中挪用漫畫角色的藝術家大有人在，舉凡羅伊‧李奇登斯坦（Roy Lichtenstein）、安迪‧沃荷（Andy Warhol）、梅爾‧拉莫斯（Mel Ramos）等都是這一方面的佼佼者，他們早在1960年便在畫布上變造流行符號，將之提升為一種獨特的藝術類別。拜這些波普藝術大師所賜，未來世代的藝術家才能在前人所開闢出的道路之上，找出創新的手法採用卡漫主題與原創對話。誠如重要策展人傑馬羅‧切蘭（Germany Celant）在2010年奧德里奇當代藝術博物館（Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art）舉辦的KAWS回顧展介紹文中所說，KAWS和同儕「從安迪‧沃荷身上得到啟發，繼而翻轉出全新的創作風格。也就是說，他們的創作帶有社會參與的色彩，也凸顯出影像、造型、產品、創意過程的挪用可以天馬行空。他們的藝術與其說是獨樹一格，更該說是彼此不斷地改造，因而締造出一種跨藝術類別、跨時代的溝通模式。」

許多藝術家雖然分屬不同世代，但他們對卡通和流行文化的視覺或意識運用方式仍有雷同之處，在這一點上KAWS的作品無論是在意圖和意義上均是與眾不同的。早期藝術家大致上傾向於評論流行文化、大眾媒體和商業生產，KAWS的作品則是較為個人和內省的——他挪用卡漫符號均只是作為表達個人思維和感受的一種手段。他提到：「對我而言所有的作品都是個人的。我所經歷的一切成就了我的作品。我就是我，我從未想過成為知名塗鴉藝術家或知名畫家。我只是將我的內在世界畫出來。」

KAWS成長於1970年代末、1980年代，在他的環境中當代商業、平面設計、卡通影像無所不在，這些元素會在日後成為他創作的基礎可想而知。卡通和漫畫的妙處在於即刻並精準地描繪出抽象人類情感和狀態。麥克‧奧平（Michael Auping）對此有敏銳的觀察：「由於卡通故事通常不長，它對人類情緒的描繪是以簡化出發的，例如：開心／生氣，好／壞。KAWS帶進來的情感卻更為複雜微妙，憂鬱、噁心、驕傲和羨慕都有，這便相當於卡通世界中的存在主義。KAWS以獨特而乖張的手法，將家喻戶曉的老鼠和其他廣受歡迎的卡通角色翻轉成墮落並帶有瑕疵的血肉之軀。」

KAWS和前人的作品之間有意識型態和概念上的差異，同時或許更重要的是他們在挪用影像上的實際風格和構圖方式大相徑庭。李奇登斯坦的《大力水手》（1961）、沃荷的《超人》（1961）或拉莫斯的《蝙蝠俠》（1961）均是頗為直接了當地挪用原始影像，KAWS卻是大剌剌地解構主題然後將之重構。他把主題改頭換面以便創造更誇張的肢體語言，然後切割出極為局部的構圖。通過這樣的大動作，他反而能更精準地使用影像，賦予作品豐富的個人感受和意義。

在此拍品中，KAWS再次使用他最喜歡的海綿寶寶（Sponge Bob Squarepants）做為主題，這主題英文又稱KAWSBob。在某次與演員和收藏家陶比‧麥奎爾（Tobey Maguire）的訪談之中，KAWS說：「我最早是為了菲瑞‧威廉斯（Pharrell Williams）畫海綿寶寶的，後來開始畫比較小的作品，也越畫越抽象。我會想畫海綿寶寶是因為我原本就對形狀特別感興趣。」確實他經常以海綿寶寶當作創作題材，不過此拍品比起其他相同主題的畫作又更具有戲劇效果和力量。在此，KAWS局部放大海綿寶寶到最後只能看到一隻眼睛，瞳孔被他標誌性的X符號遮住。雖然這樣的作法使得圖像顯得抽象，觀者仍能辨識出這是海綿寶寶的眼睛。KAWS利用誇張的構圖營造出危險、恐懼、焦慮即將臨頭的效果，這效果又因為他大量使用紅色和大尺寸的畫布而放大。

論及KAWS的作品和他在流行影像和文化上的持續探索，奧平如此評論道：「憑著他的創作過程和題材的世界知名度，他得以將他挪用卡通的作品提升到全新層次。若沃荷曾說過他想成為機器，KAWS則可能會自詡為卡通，即化身成青春永駐的卡通角色，永遠不會老去也不會逝去。」

1. Germano Celant, "B D and K", in Kaws: 1993-2010, exh. cat., Ridgefield, Connecticut, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 2010, pp. 47-48.
2. KAWS in Conversation with Romain Daubriac, "KAWS: XX", in Clark Magazine, no. 45, November/December 2010.
3. Michael Auping, "America's Cartoon Mind", in A. Karnes, Where the End Starts: KAWS, exh. cat., Fort Worth, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2016, p. 68
4. KAWS quoted in T. Maguire, "KAWS", in Interview, May 2010, p. 118.
5. Auping, p. 74.