Toys & Sculptures

Designer toys—often produced in limited editions in collaboration with artists—emerged in the market in the 1990s, beginning in Hong Kong and Japan and quickly spreading West with the growing popularity of street art culture. The artist KAWS, a pioneer in bringing toy culture to the upper tiers of the art world, released his first vinyl figurine in 1999: an eight-inch “Companion” inspired by Mickey Mouse. In the decades since, many of the most prominent street artists—Banksy, Ron English, Takashi Murakami, and Shepard Fairey, among them—have similarly transformed popular cartoons and their own signature characters into three-dimensional collectible, collaborating with established toy brands like Medicom Toy, Bounty Hunter, Bathing Ape, and …