Gauntlet Gallery
What is KAWS’s piece called “Kaws x Pushead Companion (Green)”?
Summary
This is a collaborative Companion figure created with Pushead, the legendary artist behind skull-laden artwork for Metallica, Misfits, and Zorlac skateboards, here in a green colorway. The piece grafts Pushead's intricate, macabre skull-and-bone illustration style onto KAWS's Companion form, producing a hybrid that retains the Companion's silhouette and X'd-out eyes while adopting Pushead's gnarled, gothic surface detail. It exemplifies KAWS's practice of merging his icon with the visual signatures of cult collaborators drawn from skate, punk, and underground music culture, resulting in a darker, more aggressive variant of the otherwise cuddly Companion.
Why It Matters
The Pushead Companion is significant as a meeting of two subcultural heavyweights — KAWS, rooted in graffiti and toys, and Pushead, whose horror-skull imagery defined a generation of punk and metal album art and skate graphics. The collaboration reframes the Companion through a darker lens, swapping KAWS's smooth pop surfaces for Pushead's dense, sinewy detail and amplifying the mortality and skull themes already latent in KAWS's X-eyes. For collectors, it is a coveted crossover that bridges fan bases — KAWS devotees, Pushead followers, and skate/music-art enthusiasts — and demonstrates how KAWS uses collaboration to expand his iconography rather than dilute it. The green colorway adds a toxic, almost zombie-like quality that suits the macabre concept. As a collaborative Companion, it occupies a special tier in the KAWS catalog: not a standard release but an artist-to-artist statement, prized for its rarity relative to mainline Companions and for the way it deepens the Companion's recurring meditation on death.
Collector Perspective
This figure draws collectors who appreciate KAWS's edgier collaborations and cross-collectors from the Pushead, skate, and metal worlds. Its appeal is sculptural and shelf-based rather than decorative-wall, and the green, skull-detailed surface reads as a statement piece that signals taste beyond mainstream KAWS fandom. Within a collection it pairs naturally with other Companion variants and collaborative figures, providing tonal contrast to the brighter, friendlier mainline editions. Collectors value the artist-to-artist provenance, the macabre styling, and relative scarcity; condition and original packaging meaningfully affect desirability. It suits a collector telling a story about KAWS's roots in subculture rather than his blue-chip ascent.
Historical Context
The Pushead Companion belongs to KAWS's collaborative practice that flowered during and after his toy-and-vinyl era, when partnering with cult figures extended his reach across creative scenes. Pushead's lineage in punk, metal, and skate art connects the Companion back to the street and DIY cultures from which KAWS himself emerged as a graffiti writer. By inviting another artist to reinterpret his signature figure, KAWS treated the Companion as a shared canvas — a strategy that parallels his brand collaborations while staying closer to fine-art and subcultural credibility. It marks a moment where KAWS's icon was secure enough to absorb a strong outside style without losing its identity.
FAQ
Who is Pushead?
Pushead is an artist famous for intricate skull artwork on punk and metal album covers and skateboards, including work for Metallica and the Misfits.
How does this differ from a standard Companion?
It keeps the Companion's silhouette and X'd-out eyes but applies Pushead's dense, macabre skull-and-bone styling for a much darker look.
Why is it collectible?
It is a cult artist-to-artist crossover that appeals to both KAWS and Pushead collectors and is scarcer than mainline Companions.
What does the green colorway signify?
Green gives the figure a toxic, zombie-like quality fitting the macabre concept; it is one of the collaboration's colorways.
Related Works
About the Artist
KAWS is the working name of Brian Donnelly (b. 1974, Jersey City). He began in the 1990s subverting bus-shelter and phone-booth advertisements, then built a singular visual language around the Companion — a Mickey-Mouse-descended figure with crossed-out X eyes — alongside Chum, BFF, Accomplice and a cast of appropriated cartoon characters. His practice spans paintings, screenprints, vinyl and bronze sculpture, and the monumental KAWS:Holiday installations shown in cities worldwide. His work is held by the Brooklyn Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and major private collections, and he is among the most collected artists of his generation.