Buoyed by the success of last year’s MLB Tokyo Series merch collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, the Dodgers are venturing further into partnerships with cutting-edge artists.
Fans whose eyes are solely focused on the diamond might be unfamiliar with KAWS, aka Brian Donnelly, a Brooklyn-based artist and designer whose signature creation is Companion, an art toy and sculpture that resembles an eerie Mickey Mouse with a skull head and “X” marks for eyes.
How that sensibility meshes with Major League Baseball will be evident when the KAWS x MLB collection is released ahead of the Dodgers visiting the New York Yankees for a three-game series July 17-19. The release was announced by Fanatics and Complex, which will market and distribute the collection.
KAWS’ interpretation of official team gear will reside on Nike-produced jerseys, T-shirts, hoodies and caps. Count on the ubiquitous “XX” that typically stand in for eyeballs on the Companion characterand the artist’s other dark cartoonish creations.
The collection also will include baseballs, bats and a limited run of Topps trading cards that promise to feature KAWS’ interpretation of Dodgers and Yankees iconography.
“Timed to one of baseball’s most storied rivalries, the collection brings KAWS’ distinctive visual language to the diamond,” said Aaron Levant, chief executive of Complex. “The result is a crossover moment at the intersection of sport, art, and pop culture, where legacy franchises are reframed through one of the most influential artists of this generation.”
KAWS’ body of work spans more than 25 years and includes painting, sculpture and design that straddle fine art and global culture. He is known for larger-than-life sculptures and hard-edge paintings that feature his hybrid cartoon characters.
While studying at New York’s School of Visual Arts, he moonlighted as a graffiti artist, defacing billboards, freight trains and water towers. That changed in 1996 when he was given a skeleton key that opened glass advertising boxes on the sides of phone booths and bus kiosks.
KAWS stopped writing his name on walls and began altering ads. He would steal ad posters, paint over them with rudimentary cartoon skulls with X’ed-out eyes in pastel colors, then carefully replace them.
Now his creations range in value from under $20 to millions. His 2005 remake of the the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album cover using characters from “The Simpsons” sold for $14.8 million at Sotheby’s in 2019. His 9-foot-tall painting of Simpsons characters on a couch sold for $7.4 million. His piece showing a screaming “Kawsbob” (SpongeBob) fetched $6 million.
The MLB collection will debut at Fanatics Festin New York from July 16 to 19 and in the Yankees team store July 16. The full collection — including the Topps trading cards — will launch globally July 20 on Complex.com, Fanatics.com, MLBShop.com and Nike.com.
Items will be available at select Dodgers team stores July 20 and in the Dodger Stadium team store July 31.
“KAWS is one of the defining artists of our generation, and bringing his artwork together with Major League Baseball and two of the most iconic franchises in sports creates something that speaks to fans far beyond baseball,” Levant said. “This collection is designed to live at the intersection of sport, art, fashion and collecting in a way that only this group of partners could bring together.”
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