KAWS: Art and Comics

A wide-ranging exploration of comics, characters, and the visual language of KAWS and his contemporaries.

KAWS. Art & Comics explores the interplay between comics, comic strips, cartoons, and fine art. It places the American artist KAWS in dialog with selected contemporary stances, focusing on the artistic autonomy of his characters—figures that unite characteristics of street, pop, commercial, and public art. Comics are characterized by a universal language and exist in many cultures as an accessible way of telling stories graphically, in words and images.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ad Reinhardt were fine artists who created comics in a near-classic vein. Even before the advent of photography and (animated) films, caricature, satire, and frame-by-frame narration offered a powerful way to convey stories across national, generational, and social boundaries. From the 1960s onward, artists such as
Keith Haring and H.C. Westermann questioned the division between high and low art. Prominent contemporary artists in this tradition include KAWS, Joyce Pensato, Cosima von Bonin, and Peter Saul.

KAWS began as a graffiti artist in the 1990s, later overpainting posters and advertisements in public spaces by obscuring faces with a stylized skull and crossbones. He is known for monumental figurative sculptures in bronze, wood, and inflatables. His COMPANIONs and ACCOMPLICEs display a range of emotional states, often isolated and melancholy.

RALPH GLEIS is Director General of The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna.

ANGELA STIEF is Director of the Albertina Modern and Chief Curator for Contemporary Art from 1945 at the ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna.

FLORIAN WALDVOGEL is Head of the Modern Collection at the Tiroler Landesmuseum, Innsbruck.