All this talk about the Simpsons movie and this Simponizer, where you can make yourself into a Simpson (mine made me look like a forty year old Jewish lady) has made me remember this strange book sitting on my shelf. It’s a board book of fake blister cards of Simpsons characters made into Kaws characters with his signature skull and crossbone face. The book even has the hole used to hang the blister card at the top running through each page, and plastic coverings over each painting. I think Kaws is best known for tampering with advertisments- bus shelters and subway ads in the late 90s. He would steal the ads, work on them and then reinstall them. He worked with what he was given and made his drawings fit into the ads creating a new dialogue. You can see a few of those here. They always make me laugh. In a lot of cases a passer-by might not even notice they were fake. A lot of times they were taken down fast, either by authorities who noticed or eventually by fans of his work. What is Kaws up to now? He has a website and a blog and seems to have recently opened a store OriginalFake, a collaboration with Medicom Toy in Tokyo. You can also get some of his toys here too. This book seems to be out of print but a couple amazon sellers have it for a hefty price.

© Julia Rothman 2007