Cartoon King: The Brilliant Accessibility of KAWS at Crystal Bridges

Lindsey Wilson·
Visual Art
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It’s Mickey Mouse, but not. It’s The Simpsons, but twisted. It’s a shaggy Muppet, but there’s something off about the eyes…

Since the late 1990s, KAWS (legal name: Brian Donnelly) has been putting his own original twist on well-known pop-culture figures and inventing his own cast of iconic characters that are complex, familiar, and deeply relatable.

“Part of the brilliance of KAWS’ work is that he pulls from the world we know,” says Alejo Benedetti, curator of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. “His characters may have recognizable elements of icons from popular culture, but at their core, the human connection is always the strongest throughline. You’re seeing this tiny little figure down on the ground, face-down, and we’ve all been there! It’s not a person or human, yet we are able to connect with it.”

Benedetti curated his museum’s new exhibition, KAWS: FAMILY, with Julian Cox, deputy director and chief curator at Art Gallery of Ontario, where the exhibition originated. On view through July 28, 2025, the Crystal Bridges exhibition is about 4,000 square feet larger than it was in Ontario, providing even more space for KAWS’s sculptures, drawings, paintings, advertising interventions, and product collaborations.

“Knowing that we were going to be expanding was exciting for me,” says Benedetti. “It meant I got to have these different conversations with Brian about what it looks like to reimagine this for our space and present it in a way that tells a story.” Benedetti points out that in Ontario, KAWS: FAMILY was divided over three main areas; at Crystal Bridges, it’s in one continuous space.

But KAWS has never been defined by museum walls. He began as a street graffiti artist in New York City, then painted backgrounds for animated series such as Daria and Doug. KAWS then began subvertising (spoofing ads) at bus shelters and phone booths, always signing his tag KAWS (which doesn’t stand for anything; he just liked the way the letters looked).

Now his work is, quite literally, everywhere. From Nike Air Jordans to cereal boxes, cosmetics packaging to a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, KAWS’s art knows no bounds.

“He’s so committed to these characters and this work existing out in the world,” says Benedetti. “For most artists, you’ll probably only see their pieces if you’re in a museum or at a wealthy collector’s home. With Brian, he made sure that if a museum could own a sculpture, then you as a regular person could also own something of his. Literally anybody walking down the cereal aisle could own their own little piece of KAWS.”

KAWS: FAMILY takes its name from the exhibition’s centerpiece sculpture, created in 2021, which brings together four of KAWS’ recurring characters of varying sizes posed as a nuclear family. With their Xs for eyes, bulbous head protrusions, and distorted mouths, the figures project an overwhelming sadness despite their confident stances. Some of his sculptures, like CLEAN SLATE at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth or ALONG THE WAY at the Brooklyn Museum, are larger than life, standing nearly 20 feet tall. Others, like the lounging pink creature of TIME OFF, are not even 12 inches high.

“In Brian’s mind, he consistently thinks about the same level of detail for both an eight-foot-tall painting and a different brand collaboration,” says Benedetti. “Every aspect is just flawless.”

In addition to his contemporary art, KAWS’s partnerships will also be on display. Take in the dazzling diamond-encrusted chain crowned by a plump spaceman, or an entire wall of General Mills special-edition “Monster Cereal” boxes from 2022. Each piece, no matter its level of commercialism, is presented with the same curatorial consistency.

Besides KAWS’s familiar characters, visitors to the exhibit also get to see an abstraction of Charles Schultz’s iconic beagle, Snoopy. MAN’S BEST FRIEND borrows Schultz’s recognizable style of drawing—“lines that are always slightly wavy,” explains Benedetti, “you can recognize it in an instant”—to present the famous canine in different choppy perspectives. It’s Benedetti’s favorite section of the exhibition, and he says their installation even extends onto the background and makes its way into some of the nearby paintings. Highlighting KAWS’s relationship with abstraction and using the visual language of cartoons as a point of entry is part of the power of KAWS, Benedetti says.

“This suite of three paintings is hiding familiar characters in plain sight,” he says. “You’re looking at this very colorful work and your companion might say, ‘I love the Kermit the Frog one” and sure enough, you look again and Kermit emerges. Crystal Bridges is a museum that welcomes everyone, and Brian’s work is so accessible that you don’t need to be a fine-art scholar in order to connect with it.”

—LINDSEY WILSON

Lindsey Wilson

Lindsey Wilson is a Dallas-based arts writer and critic with a journalism master's from Syracuse University and an undying love for chips and salsa. When not at the theater (which is rare), she enjoys reading, playing with her dogs, and traveling. Photo by Jeffrey Hummel.