Gauntlet Gallery
What is KAWS’s piece called “Dissected Companion Print (Black)”?
Summary
A flat graphic screenprint depicting KAWS's signature Companion in his "dissected" form, rendered here in a stark black palette. The Companion — a Mickey-Mouse-derived figure with X'd-out eyes and gloved hands — is cut open to reveal a cartoonish interior of organs, bones, and a beating heart. This anatomical motif is one of KAWS's most recurring conceits, turning a beloved cartoon body into an object of vulnerability and mortality. As a print, it distills the imagery of the larger dissected vinyl and sculptural Companions into a graphic, wall-ready format prized by collectors who want the iconography at an accessible price point.
Why It Matters
The Dissected Companion is arguably the most conceptually loaded image in KAWS's vocabulary. By literally cutting open his cartoon avatar, KAWS exposes the gap between cheerful pop-culture surfaces and the fragile, mortal bodies beneath — a meditation on consumer culture's hollow promises and on the artist's own emotional life. The black colorway intensifies the graphic punch, reading almost like an X-ray or a noir reduction of the figure. Within KAWS's print practice, dissected works bridge his street-art roots and his fine-art ambitions, translating a sculptural idea into a democratic, editioned object. For collectors, prints in this family are foundational: they reference the dissected vinyl toys and the monumental "4 Foot" Companions while remaining attainable. They also showcase KAWS's mastery of flat color and crisp outline, the formal language that made his work instantly legible across painting, sculpture, and merchandise. As an entry into the Dissected canon, it carries outsized recognition and cross-collector appeal.
Collector Perspective
This print appeals to collectors building a focused KAWS holding around the Companion and its dissected variants, as well as buyers who want a high-recognition image without the cost of a sculpture or painting. The black palette is graphic and architectural, suiting modern interiors and reading strongly even from a distance — it anchors a wall the way a poster of an icon does. Within a broader KAWS collection it functions as a "key image," pairing naturally with dissected vinyl figures, the 4 Foot Dissected Companion, and standard Companion prints. Condition, flatness, and color integrity drive desirability, since the black ground shows handling. It rewards collectors who value KAWS's conceptual side — mortality and anatomy — over purely decorative colorways.
Historical Context
The Dissected Companion sits at the hinge of KAWS's career, when he was moving from the graffiti and subway-ad interventions of the 1990s into the toy-and-vinyl boom of the 2000s and toward fine-art legitimacy. The Companion debuted as a vinyl figure with Bounty Hunter and Medicom, and the dissected version — peeling back the figure to expose its insides — quickly became a defining statement, restaged across toys, sculptures, and prints. This black print descends from that lineage, carrying the anatomical concept into a wall format. It reflects KAWS's broader arc from appropriating cartoon bodies toward interrogating them, a move that helped reposition him from designer-toy phenomenon to museum-collected artist whose monumental Companions now appear in public installations worldwide.
FAQ
What is the "dissected" Companion?
It is KAWS's Companion figure shown cut open to reveal a cartoon interior of organs and bones, a recurring motif about vulnerability behind a pop-culture surface.
Why is it printed in black?
The black palette gives the image a stark, X-ray-like graphic intensity and is one of several colorways KAWS has used for dissected works.
Is this a print or a sculpture?
This is a flat graphic screenprint; related sculptural and vinyl versions of the dissected Companion also exist.
How does it relate to other Companion works?
It shares the figure and X'd-out eyes of all Companion works but uniquely exposes the interior, linking it to dissected vinyl toys and the 4 Foot Dissected Companion.
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.