More recently, KAWS has earned acclaim as a contemporary painter, producing large-scale canvases that nod to the surrealistic style of the Chicago Imagists.

WSJ: Up in the Air | Making It

There are also hints of contact with all sorts of other art, from the Mexican muralists of the 1920s and '30s to the Chicago imagists of the '60s and '70s.

WSJ: An Emerging Democracy's Far-Ranging Art | 'Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India After Independence | Peabody Essex Museum | By Tom L. Freudenheim