“Graffiti grows out of a desire to communicate and connect with the broadest possible audience in a direct and unmediated way; it is comparable to self-publishing, bypassing commercial networks and going directly to the audience.” Tsai, Eugenie. Kaws: What Party, p. 73.

The author continues:

“By putting his tag out on the streets, [Donnelly] was calling attention to his alter ego KAWS. Tagging private and publicly owned property in urban environments or settings is a way of claiming those spaces. Writing during the early days of graffiti in New York, Norman Mailer distilled the essence of the genre as getting the word out about yourself: ‘For now your name is over their name, over the subway manufacturer, the Transit Authority, the city administration. Your presence is on their presence, your alias hangs over their scene.’ Despite its disregard for the sanctity of property ownership, a concept at the heart of capitalism, graffiti’s goal of branding and promoting the writer aligns completely with other core values of capitalism and corporate America. KAWS’s early engagement with capitalism and consumer culture plays out further in his subsequent work.

“Making unsanctioned art in public areas of the city gave KAWS a creative start outside the formal art world. The streets and the city were his workspace. And it is this willingness to subvert the rules and challenge the status quo that has continued to shape his career even as he incorporated a more traditional studio-based art practice. In comparison to an artist like Jean-Michel Basquiat, who began his career in the late 1970s as a graffiti writer but decamped to a studio in the early 1980s to produce paintings for his gallery to sell, KAWS’s practice continued to evolve independent from the ecology of the art world. KAWS maintains a studio practice and produces toys and products that are sold via hs website as well as temporary outdoor spectacles.”