All aboard the KAWS train! Not only is Brian Donnelly, the artist better known as KAWS, the fifth living artist to have a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, he also designed the entire campaign for it as well. Among the highlights of the campaign is this incredible 3-car MTA shuttle wrapped inside and out with KAWS’ design. The S train travels exclusively between Grand Central and Times Square, two of the biggest transit hubs in New York City, accessible by almost any other train. Also, since it just goes back and forth between the two stations, that means it’s never more than 5-minutes away.

No doubt this represents a massive change in the ideology of the city and the MTA that have taken every measure to prevent graffiti and erase that ‘blemish’ from the history of the transit system. In the documentary Style Wars a group of graffiti artists banded together and, in the words of Duro, tried to “negogiate” with the city in an attempt to get permission to paint the New York City subway. These artist-designed vinyl-wrapped wholecars are a far stretch from the days when NYC’s transit system was covered inside and out with unsanctioned graffiti, but may just be the closest opportunity people have today to reliving the experience. Although it’s not quite the same as seeing a top-to-bottom straight letter pull into the station, these three train cars commissioned and paid for by Macy’s appear to have granted KAWS a good deal of creative freedom and include the artist’s signature and biography.

KAWS first made a name for himself as a graffiti artist painting billboards and freight trains in New Jersey and walls in New York with members of the influential crews FC and TC-5. He then began to adapt his craft, subverting bus stop and phone booth advertisements by incorporating his signature cartoon skull and crossbones character with X’s over it’s eyes. In the late 90s, KAWS began to design and produce limited edition vinyl toys and later launched the clothing line Original Fake, opening a flagship store in Tokyo, Japan.

Over the past decade KAWS’ art career has skyrocketed having solo exhibitions at Gering & Lopez Gallery in New York, Honor Frasier Gallery in Los Angeles, Galerie Perrotin in Paris, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut and at The High Museum of Art in Atlanta. In addition to his flourishing fine art career, KAWS’ work with Macy’s comes after a long list of collaborations with major brands including Hennessy and Nike to name a few. Scroll down to check out 12ozProphet’s photos of the KAWS train and take a ride to 42nd Street to see it for yourself.

I like Kaws but that subway wrap is terrible. It could have been so much better.

Family Friendly, maybe?

I dont really dig KAWS, but he sure as hell has done a lot for the whole "urban" artist movement.

SELL OUT

Thanks for posting. Don't like to be negative but i just can't help myself with this one. Seriously ..... that is a piss poor effort. What a missed opportunity. This guy has spent too much time rubbing shoulders with advertising yes men and art gallery wankers.

It doesn't look like anything an ad agency or art gallery would come up with. There's nothing artistic about it really, nothing shocking or ironic. If he had just tricked out the car with a bunch of KAWSiness it wouldn't have helped the parade much. I've been a critic of his recent work, but this seems pretty innocuous. Genuine effort to get children interested in the parade?

EDIT: But then I guess the question is, why does it matter that KAWS did it?

I've rode the Kaws train several times and it's ok, but I think the design is a little weak, dialed it in maybe, I find his sketch style is suitable for a drawing or canvas, but on this scale, it just looks sloppy and like a sketch, not final art. But I find "fine" "graf" "whatever" artists often struggle with commercial art/ advertising layout assignments.

Laughable. This is not even remotely reminiscent of "end to end burners". Just looks like all the surface buses wrapped with vinyl advertising - and that's exactly what this is.

Hypebeast.

Not to mention a new advertising avenue for the city to make money off of

seems to have lost grip on reality some time ago.

http://www.jeremyriad.com/blog/editoria ... ompanions/


the train just like most all of his latest toys is rather boring imho,
but then stuff like companion "balloon" is totally what i love to see.
having your characters fly through streets of nyc is hard to beat.

Makes me wish Keith Haring were still alive. That train looks like the waiting room at a pediatric clinic.

Boring and lame!

At least he refrained from sabotaging the smurfs and just copped them as is.

The only problem I have with it is it is really boring. And I don't mean boring=safe, I just mean boring.

The perfect diminishment.

^ indeed, a just and cold verdict.

he did this for a corporation as a piece of viral marketing and more often than not compromises are struck in these cases. kindda a sad statement but as with most of these new viral "cool" takes on marketing in order to reach the "common man" the purity of these gorilla techniques is compromised to reach that mass market demographic

and best summed up in three words:
lowest. common. denominator.

looks so wrong to me. when kaws is involved want to see all characters with x eyes and bones.
if thats not possible because of business restrictions then im with devilboy ...dont do it.

In fact i would rather he refrain from using smurfs alltogether. But that's just a personal thing, smurfs belong on smurf stories or on my shelf.

how about some marbled KvPs? or enough already on this Pop music shit.

blech!

This is such a perfect metaphor for the way that street art has diluted the power of graffiti culture and drained it of its outlaw energy. Haw haw.

it's just cool to see. it's not the best kaws thing ever, I don't really care for his sketch style either, it seems pretty lazy but this reminds me of when murakami had stuff all over nyc a few years ago.