Topic
Art
KAWS, the artist Brian Donnelly, made his first Companion figure in 1999, a vinyl toy with crossed-out eyes produced with the Tokyo label Bounty Hunter. Art follows work like his, in the places where fine art, design and street culture overlap. The Companion went on to appear as giant inflatables and bronzes, and the Brooklyn Museum gave KAWS a survey called What Party in 2021. Donald Judd moved to Marfa, Texas, in the 1970s and founded the Chinati Foundation there in 1986, and his furniture follows the same rules as his sculpture. Isamu Noguchi moved between sculpture and lighting with his Akari lamps. Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group made furniture in Milan in the 1980s that looked like pop art you could sit on. Virgil Abloh's career got a museum show of its own, Figures of Speech, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2019. The articles explain who made what and when, and how to tell an artist's edition from merchandise. Judd bought the cast-iron building at 101 Spring Street in SoHo in 1968 and spent years arranging every floor.
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