The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection

The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection features more than 350 artworks chosen by KAWS from his vast personal collection of over 3,000 works on paper by some 500 artists. The Way I See It continues The Drawing Center’s tradition of exhibiting drawings from outstanding public and private collections, and offers an unprecedented glimpse into the artistic inspirations and interests of one of today’s most popular contemporary artists.

Spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, The Way I See It showcases a diverse range of artists and interprets the term “drawing” broadly to include comics, commercial illustrations, and graffiti sketches. The exhibition challenges long-held hierarchies and radically expands our understanding of what constitutes a great work of art. It includes works by Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning, self-taught masters such as Martín Ramírez, Henry Darger, and Adolf Wölfli, and comic artists like R. Crumb. The Way I See It also highlights KAWS’s impressive holdings of works by artists Peter Saul, H.C. Westermann, Helen Rae, and Susan Te Kahurangi King, alongside archives of works underrepresented in the artistic canon, including those of renowned American graffiti writers such as DONDI, SERVE, and FUTURA 2000.

For KAWS, this collection functions as a personal reference library—a way to study the progression of an artist’s style, to think abstractly about the marks of a drawing, and to remind himself that there’s more than one way of making art. Living with other artists’ work is “energy, food,” KAWS has said, highlighting the profound impact these works have on his own artistic practice and vision.