MTV Awards Will Feature a New Moonman, Made Just for Brooklyn

Bryan Thomas for The New York Times The Brooklyn-based artist KAWS, born Brian Donnelly, with his new design for the MTV Moonman statuette.

For this year, Moonman has lost its Buzz.

Since the MTV Video Music Awards began in 1984, winners have collected the Moonman, a statuette based on the image of a helmeted Buzz Aldrin planting a flag on the moon.

For this year only, the astronaut will be supplanted by a figure that looks cartoonishly extra-terrestrial: Companion, the big-eared, X-eyed creature designed by the Brooklyn artist KAWS.

The KAWS Moonman is the first time MTV has redesigned its top prize since the VMA show began. Executives thought it was an appropriate way to mark the Aug. 25 ceremony, which will take place in a new venue, the Barclays Center, also the first time a live, nationally-televised award show will be beamed from Brooklyn.

“The connection to Brooklyn, it felt like it was the perfect time to reinvent an iconic image,” said Stephen Friedman, the president of MTV. “Consistent with our DNA of creative reinvention and constant reinvention, this felt like a perfect marriage.”

The chrome MTV trophy is 13-inches tall, and like its predecessor, presents Companion in a spacesuit, holding a flag with the MTV logo. The original Moonman and the network’s logo were created in the 1980s by the same downtown firm, Manhattan Design, led by Fred Seibert. (Mr. Aldrin gave his permission for his likeness to be used.)

But don’t expect a repeat appearance by Companion. “We were crystal-clear that this is not going to be the new Moonman every year,” said Mr. Friedman. “This was for this one moment in time, and we decided, let’s roll the dice.”

The idea to work with KAWS, born Brian Donnelly, came from Jesse Ignjatovic, an executive producer of the VMAs. Mr. Donnelly has a long history of transforming fixtures of popular culture, like Darth Vader, into his own cartoonlike characters.

Companion, who sometimes sits with his hands on his face, reminiscent of Rodin’s “The Thinker,” has appeared as a
sculpture in New York and Hong Kong, among other places, as well as part
of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

“Companion winds up in things I never imagined,” Mr. Donnelly said, in an interview in his Williamsburg studio last week. “I kind of made it on a whim, and he just keeps coming back.”

Mr. Donnelly, 38, a Jersey City native who studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts and still considers himself a painter, will also design the stage set for the VMAs. It will include a 60-foot inflatable KAWS Moonman. That’s the tallest Companion ever, though he’s outweighed by a 14-ton wooden sculpture Mr. Donnelly has on display at the More Gallery in Giswil, Switzerland this summer.

The work of Mr. Donnelly, a street artist-turned toy designer-turned gallery favorite, is highly marketable. He counts Pharrell Williams as a collector and created the cover art for Kanye West’s 2008 album “808s & Heartbreak.” But he said he considers himself “an old person” and was characteristically unassuming about his stature amongst the MTV crowd.

“I’m sure there will be plenty of musicians that have no idea about me,” he said. “This will somehow infiltrate their homes and the hope is that they’ll find out more.”

As for his music industry friends, “They’ll be like, ‘What are you doing in our territory?’ ”

He is rooting for someone like Pharrell to take home a KAWS statue.

“It would just bug him out,” Mr. Donnelly said happily.