Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/734535
K AWS. The name — or rather, the tag (a graffiti signature) — just seems cool. I may not know which emoji is trending, but I do know what's cool. During my undergrad and graduate studies in art history, that word — cool — was verboten. Even though my fellow students and I might have thought Pollock or Judd were cool, we didn't say it, lest it diminish the importance of their work. Today, though, curators and art-world types are willing to bend in an attempt to reach younger audiences. (FYI, Millennials now outnumber Baby Boomers.) They are taking cues from Museum Hack — the nontraditional museum-tour company's motto is "Museums are F**king Cool!" — and looking to renegades like the Historic House Anarchist. Many curators who are close to my age grew up in the time of punk culture and skate BY BILLY FONG AND EFFECT rats — as did the artist known as KAWS. So I was over the moon when my dear gal pal Andrea Karnes — she is a top curator at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth — shared that she was putting together a comprehensive survey of KAWS' work at The Modern to open this month. KAWS has far more than his finger on the pulse — the zeitgeist, if you will. He follows in the lineage of Pop Art icons Warhol and Lichtenstein. And while the term "important" is used entirely too much of late, especially in art circles, KAWS is just that. More importantly, his work makes me smile. It is thought provoking. It leaves me wanting for more. Admittedly, this lust for more may have something to do with his crossover into fashion. Art and fashion became bedfellows in the mid-20th century. Sometimes these were full-fledged partnerships and other times designers used their work to pay homage to artists they respected. One of the greatest examples of the latter was, of course, Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian-in- spired dresses: Monsieur Saint Laurent used graphic black lines — horizontal and vertical — to break up expanses of white and primary-color blocks. True collaborations between artists and designers have occur- red with more frequency lately, and include Robb Pruitt and Jimmy Choo, James Nares and Coach, Anselm Reyle and Dior, and Keith Haring and Nicholas Kirkwood. During Marc Jacobs' long tenure as creative director of Louis Vuitton, the luxury label embarked on numerous collaborations, including Stephen Sprouse, Richard Prince, Daniel Buren, the Chapman Brothers, Dino and Jake, and Takashi Murakami. Jacobs also admires KAWS and has worked with him on creating pieces for his namesake collection. KAWS' playful style has such wide appeal that the capsule collection he created with Uniqlo instantly sold out — a first for the company that had previously only sold T-shirts stamped with the work of artists Jean Michel- KAWS KAWS and David Sims' Untitled, 2001, acrylic on photograph (continued on page 38) 36