The Whitney Museum acquired Kenny Scharf’s monumental When the Worlds Collide the year it was made (1984)—with funds from Eric Fischl, no less. At that halcyon moment, Scharf was red-hot. Almost as quickly, Scharf was downgraded to 80s kitsch. MOCA’s “Street Art” makes a full-court press to rehabilitate his reputation. That can’t be a huge surprise to anyone who’s followed Jeffrey Deitch’s gallerist career. What is surprising is how much Scharf’s art merits a revisit. It’s not so entirely 80s-specific, and in several ways, it’s historically prescient.
Born in Hollywood, Scharf attended Beverly Hills High and got an MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts. He made his reputation by importing Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters (Flintstones, Jetsons) into the canon of downtown, trip-hop graffiti. Scharf hasn’t moved too many inches beyond that. Cf. his 2004 parking garage murals for the Pasadena Museum of California Art.
Like all good Geffen extravaganzas, “Street Art” upturns the received chronology. Scharf’s cartoon-customized Cadillac predates Mr. Cartoon’s lowrider-mobiles, and his black-light period room, Cosmic Fun (below), stands up next to Rammellzee’s approximately contemporary sci-fi Merzbau.
A small Scharf painting of George Jetson Falling finds the futuristic dad in free fall, likely from the parapets of a cantilevered Case Study suburb. Foregrounding the acrophobia implicit in the TV cartoon, it’s a Daumier-wicked take on the American liberalism that is called conservatism—a celebration of freedom and technology, a disdain for safety nets.
Tags: Jeffrey Deitch, Kenny Scharf, MOCA, Mr. Cartoon, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Rammellzee
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Sorry, but give me a good lowrider show, REAL street art, anyday over this. It is just babyboomers living in the past and never wanting to grow up. A Peter Pan mobile would have been more appropriate. And the lowrider guys are much better at painting. A bought degree does not equate to talent and skill. Nor being a goofy-dorky kid equate to adult passion.
Save the colorful and spiritual Watts Towers(Nuestro Pueblo)TRUE street art, tear down the sterile and souless appropriating(plagiarizing of others original work) Ivories.
ACDE!
There is an understandable human need to avoid the fake and seek out the authentic. This need is not satisfied or honed by this venture.
I’ve seen my share of this type of work on railroad boxcars, gondolas etc. amusing as I sit in front of a railroad crossing, some of it rather nice and well done but for the most part it’s unfounded BS trash with absolutely no spark or meaning.
Much like the famous practitioners of so called fine art “Koons” “Warhol” “Hirst” “Scharf” “Urs Fischer” and many others.