KAWS was a Lost Cause

 This is the first art review I’ve written in years and it pains me to announce, but the world needs to hear this: KAWS at the Brooklyn Museum fucking sucks. 

I walked in hoping for the snarky subversiveness of a Murakami, a de St. Phalle, or a (good) Koons, and I wound up realizing that those artists spawned some lame-ass touristy Soho bullshit. 

KAWS-type paintings were a great reason to leave Soho in the 90s. They were everywhere. Appropriations of the Simpsons, maybe a Warhol reference, and then the artist’s little whimsy (in this case, pathetic X’ed out eyes, which look better on the fucking Social Distortion logo than they do on any of his waste of paint), all gooping up Broome Street, or West Broadway, while rich people laughed in lofts above with REAL Warhols and goobers picked up some dumbass canvas wasting space on a crowded street corner. Hope the fake-ass cartoony fru-fru looks good in your Fredericksburg townhouse, Virginia. 

Now, whereas, there might have been a touch of humor in his early “detournement” of GAP ads, or an awareness of hippy comix in his early drawings (and gosh, do I need to cleanse my eyeballs now with some R. Crumb or Fritz the cat), that ship sailed AHEAD OF SCHEDULE in that career. Then it became one lame thing: the Simpsons. And what are you saying, KAWS: you’re just a x’ed out victim of too much awareness in one TV show? There are other shows besides the Simpsons, and there are other records besides your lame Sgt. Pepper’s appropriation. And viewing it for more than 30 seconds revealed zero more layers of discovery for me. (note: cleanse eyeballs by looking at Sgt. Pepper’s cover online). 

I guess if it bores, the price soars?  

The only saving grace was the shamed, head-in-hands sobbing character that, I assume is a metaphor for the desperate state of affairs KAWS must see in contemporary art, in a generation Z(?) that will never see the wealth that their Boomer ancestors saw (news for ya KAWS, neither will gen x, bud), and possibly a reference to Bart crying or something. I did actually stop a moment to witness a guy photoing that piece with reverence, and a solemn gaze. Maybe that’s the empathy that I am missing. Maybe that’s the point? 

But I think the shame really ought to be in your goo-goo doll exploitative Nickelodeonism, and that guy with his camera can simply jump on the 4-5-6, go back to some third-rate Hello Kitty store in Soho, and buy a toy. 

There is nothing in a Hello Kitty store that demands the scrutiny of a museum piece, no matter how colorful and boisterous, like a multicolored Lenape clay pot, or a heightened coloristic portrait of George Washington, or the lushness of the Judy Chicago piece, all of which can be witnessed in an otherwise great museum like the Brooklyn Museum.

And yet, I feel like, were I to walk into the Hello Kitty store in Soho, there are things in there that demand more of my attention than KAWS.