Goodbye to Tom Sachs’s Hello Kitty and Friends

By Stephanie Murg on November 23, 2009 2:20 PM

(Photos: UnBeige)

It was back in the summer of 2008 that we told you about Tom Sachs‘s delightful—if deliberately rough-hewn—sculptures of Hello Kitty and friends that until this morning had upped the whimsy factor at Gordon Bunshaft-designed Lever House in Manhattan. Created in 2007 and 2008, the works are made of bronze but painted white to highlight their humble origins: as toys scaled up using foam core, glue guns, and elbow grease—as opposed to 3-D prototyping and chromium steel.

“I try to show flaws because flaws are human,” Sachs has said. “It is sculpture, because it’s talked about, sold, and shown as such. But to me it’s really bricolage, which is the French term for do-it-yourself repair. Bricolage comes from a culture that repairs rather than replaces—American culture just replaces.” Alas, the time has come for Lever House to replace Hello Kitty. This morning, while strolling up Park Avenue, we happened upon the deinstallation of the monumental bronzes, as a team of workers forklifted Hello Kitty, My Melody, Miffy, and company onto flatbed trucks, bound perhaps for other glass-walled International Style office buildings in need of cheering up.