KAWS UNTITLED (KIMPSONS) PACKAGE PAINTING SERIES, 2002. Estimate: $100,000-150,000.
New Now at Phillips New York, 4 March.
Paul McCarthy and KAWS have a penchant for exposing the macabre behind the familiar to conjure the uncanny. It is no coincidence that they appropriate childish pop-culture imagery such as the memorable puppet-turned-naughty-boy Pinocchio, punished for his compulsive lying with an ever-growing nose, which McCarthy aptly called a “facial erection.” In KAWS’ PINOCCHIO, 2017, the character covers his eyes in shame to no avail, as the fatal “X”-es are still visible over his hands. To complete the KAWS-ifcation of the wooden toy, swollen bones protrude out of his head to represent a cartoon-like skull.
KAWS UNTITLED, 2000. Estimate: $80,000-120,000.
KAWS employs this irreverent imagery in UNTITLED, 2000, (lot 39) which pictures crops of a COMPANION, his most iconic character, over each side of a vertical black box. While one façade accentuates his puffed belly and disguised groin, another makes a smiley face from the buttons and inseam of his rear shorts. The top of the box displays a detail of the COMPANION’s head, cropped so dramatically that the form borders abstraction, a strategy frequently employed by KAWS where the viewer’s visual lexicon informs the projection of a full character from such tightly cropped glimpses.
Paul McCarthy Captain Dick Hat, 2003. Estimate: $150,000-200,000.
With similar juvenility, McCarthy’s Captain Dick Hat, 2003, expands the phallic nose motif by echoing its bulbous form throughout the sculpture. As rendered in the artist’s earlier work on paper, Penis Hat, 2001, Museum of Modern Art, New York, the pirate’s body merges with his ship, from whose bow a mast protrudes on an upward diagonal. Yet, his castration, which is announced in the earlier work, has taken full form in the gory sculpture. The severed member is displayed in enormous proportions atop the captain’s head, in lieu of his tricorne, at the same time depriving him of and ridiculing him for his stereotypical masculinity.
This surreal and forlorn mood is echoed in the over-saturated tones of KAWS’ UNTITLED (KIMPSONS), PACKAGE PAINTING SERIES, 2002, which transforms the otherwise familiar suburban landscape. As another well-known troublemaker wanders down the street, his visage is transmogrified by KAWS’ signature “X”-eyes, skull-shaped chin and protruding bones. The traditional acrylic on canvas is unconventionally wrapped in an ordinary blister package, normally found in a convenience store. The contrast between the two materials humors the ideas of uniqueness, fetishism and commodification. With their dark and comical interpretations of popular imagery, McCarthy and KAWS go beyond a critique or glorification of mass culture to surpass the distinctions between high and low culture.