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Lot Essay
Coming to critical attention in New York in the 1980s, Kenny Scharf is one of the most recognizable artists from that important period of postwar art still working today. His unmistakable style combines curious figures and idiosyncratic characters with a deep appreciation for his creative roots in the East Village where he befriended and worked with artists like Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Travel Time is a boisterous example of Scharf’s signature style and playfully merges his unique iconography with a raw background of spray painted patterning. Realized the year before Scharf’s inclusion in the 1985 Whitney Biennial, the present work shows the artist’s talent for bridging the gap between tagged train cars and gallery walls. In a review of the recent documentary on Scharf’s life and work, David D’Arcy notes, “The novelty of graffiti enabled Scharf to give cartoon images a new and profitable life as art, while the comics artists at publications such as Heavy Metal and Raw, who created characters with similar bulbous eyes and slimy limbs, toiled away in isolation for next to nothing” (D. D’Arcy, “Now 62, but still wielding spray paint, Kenny Scharf is filmed by his daughter,” Art Newspaper, June 25, 2021). Scharf’s ability to intertwine his own stylistic leanings with the uptrend of graffiti and street art in the 1980s cemented his legacy as a pillar of the scene and an inspiration for generations to come.
“The novelty of graffiti enabled Scharf to give cartoon images a new and profitable life as art, while the comics artists at publications such as Heavy Metal and Raw, who created characters with similar bulbous eyes and slimy limbs, toiled away in isolation for next to nothing.” David D’Arcy
Emblazoned over the top of multiple horizontal lines of swoops and curls in loose, feathered paint, nine amorphous characters float, jostle, and squirm across the canvas. The largest figures, a green smiling face on the left and a purple face grimacing on the right, are angular and jagged. Their bodies are nothing but outlandish faces that float like crystalline amoebas in the compositional space while the viewer’s pareidolia transforms these bits of shape into fully-formed characters. Elsewhere in the painting, two rectangular cyclopes blast past like comets with trailing speed lines while an errant grouping of wobbly, jelly-like compatriots drip and drop amidst the chaos. Scharf’s work is often given over to a riot of color, energetic lines, and constantly moving forms, and Travel Time is a clear example of the artist’s ability to fill the entire work with an electric hum of action.
A close friend and frequent collaborator of Keith Haring, Scharf met the bespectacled ingenue at the School of Visual Arts in New York. They were both taken by the intersection between graffiti culture, Pop, and animated cartoons. This mutual interest is apparent in both of the artists’ work and was on full display in the many exhibitions, parties, and performances the two did together. When Haring interviewed Scharf in 1985, the latter spoke about his time growing up in Los Angeles and how it affected his later work. “[G]rowing up in Los Angeles, [...] everything was real Pop. The car washes looked like space stations, and the coffee shops did, too, and the cars looked like space ships. Everything was like the Jetsons in the early ‘60s in L.A. We all used to say, ‘By the ‘80s, we’ll all be going to space, and there’ll be seats for everyone – it’ll be great.’ Then the ‘70s came around and everything got real boring, and I refused to believe it” (K. Scharf, quoted in K. Haring “Kenny Scharf,” Interview, February 1985). Scharf’s refusal to accept perceived normalcy or to lock in step with the status quo has made his work timeless. It consistently refuses to adhere to the common visual dialogue and instead looks back to the fictional futures of his youth. Cartoons and space ships collide with the reality of urban living in a manner that may seem completely light-hearted at first but really highlights the national mental shift from glittering space-age dreams to humdrum workaday suburbia.
Travel Time is a boisterous example of Scharf’s signature style and playfully merges his unique iconography with a raw background of spray painted patterning. Realized the year before Scharf’s inclusion in the 1985 Whitney Biennial, the present work shows the artist’s talent for bridging the gap between tagged train cars and gallery walls. In a review of the recent documentary on Scharf’s life and work, David D’Arcy notes, “The novelty of graffiti enabled Scharf to give cartoon images a new and profitable life as art, while the comics artists at publications such as Heavy Metal and Raw, who created characters with similar bulbous eyes and slimy limbs, toiled away in isolation for next to nothing” (D. D’Arcy, “Now 62, but still wielding spray paint, Kenny Scharf is filmed by his daughter,” Art Newspaper, June 25, 2021). Scharf’s ability to intertwine his own stylistic leanings with the uptrend of graffiti and street art in the 1980s cemented his legacy as a pillar of the scene and an inspiration for generations to come.
“The novelty of graffiti enabled Scharf to give cartoon images a new and profitable life as art, while the comics artists at publications such as Heavy Metal and Raw, who created characters with similar bulbous eyes and slimy limbs, toiled away in isolation for next to nothing.” David D’Arcy
Emblazoned over the top of multiple horizontal lines of swoops and curls in loose, feathered paint, nine amorphous characters float, jostle, and squirm across the canvas. The largest figures, a green smiling face on the left and a purple face grimacing on the right, are angular and jagged. Their bodies are nothing but outlandish faces that float like crystalline amoebas in the compositional space while the viewer’s pareidolia transforms these bits of shape into fully-formed characters. Elsewhere in the painting, two rectangular cyclopes blast past like comets with trailing speed lines while an errant grouping of wobbly, jelly-like compatriots drip and drop amidst the chaos. Scharf’s work is often given over to a riot of color, energetic lines, and constantly moving forms, and Travel Time is a clear example of the artist’s ability to fill the entire work with an electric hum of action.
A close friend and frequent collaborator of Keith Haring, Scharf met the bespectacled ingenue at the School of Visual Arts in New York. They were both taken by the intersection between graffiti culture, Pop, and animated cartoons. This mutual interest is apparent in both of the artists’ work and was on full display in the many exhibitions, parties, and performances the two did together. When Haring interviewed Scharf in 1985, the latter spoke about his time growing up in Los Angeles and how it affected his later work. “[G]rowing up in Los Angeles, [...] everything was real Pop. The car washes looked like space stations, and the coffee shops did, too, and the cars looked like space ships. Everything was like the Jetsons in the early ‘60s in L.A. We all used to say, ‘By the ‘80s, we’ll all be going to space, and there’ll be seats for everyone – it’ll be great.’ Then the ‘70s came around and everything got real boring, and I refused to believe it” (K. Scharf, quoted in K. Haring “Kenny Scharf,” Interview, February 1985). Scharf’s refusal to accept perceived normalcy or to lock in step with the status quo has made his work timeless. It consistently refuses to adhere to the common visual dialogue and instead looks back to the fictional futures of his youth. Cartoons and space ships collide with the reality of urban living in a manner that may seem completely light-hearted at first but really highlights the national mental shift from glittering space-age dreams to humdrum workaday suburbia.