Guest of honor at the AmfAR gala, the glamorous evening which closes the Cannes Film Festival, he arrives by helicopter from the Cap-Eden-Roc hotel at the top of this hill in the Var.
Bob on his head, vintage t-shirt that he designed himself, Dior jeans, gift from his friend Kim Jones with whom he signed a collab in 2021. Kenny Scharf smiles at life and life smiles at him. At Villa Navarra, a gallery house designed by architect Rudy Ricciotti reserved for the happy few of the art world, the painter-sculptor is exhibiting, something rare, twenty-six works on paper. “It’s Doriano Navarra’s idea,” he explains, contemplating the installation. When I like the idea, I follow orders…”
I am aware of the importance of my story and I am proud of it, but it does not obsess me
Kenny Scharf
With the art world, Kenny had his ups and downs, and never hid them. But with museums, this establishment which has long snubbed him, “things are starting to get better”. In October, he will have his first major museum exhibition at the Brant Foundation in New York, then another in the summer in a museum in Shanghai. “And I have just been asked to exhibit at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid, everything is happening! »
“Way Way Back’N Wilma”, acrylic and screen-printed ink on Arches paper.
Paris Match
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© Julien Faure
Before that, too often, he was only seen as Basquiat’s friend, Warhol’s friend, Keith Haring’s roommate, “one of the loves of my life.” It’s not easy to be the last living witness to the era when art reinvented itself on the streets of the East Village. Looking back on this past, as we still often invite people to do, is over time “sweet and bitter”. “I am aware of the importance of my story and I am proud of it, but I am not obsessed with it. »
New York, like all cities in the world, looks like a shopping center
Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf would have liked the documentary that his daughter Malia dedicated to him in 2020 to “close the door to an era, but people talk to me about it again and again, while going back through my life brings back sometimes painful memories, of very beautiful too.” Because when he wanders around New York now, the ghosts no longer catch up with him. “When I was young, I ran the streets, the city was crazy, wild, dangerous, and I no longer feel that way. Everything changed. New York, like all cities in the world, feels like a shopping center. »
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“Out of Town!”, acrylic and screen printing ink on Arches paper.
Paris Match
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© Julien Faure
Scharf returned to live in Los Angeles, where, at the age of 3, he understood that painting would be his “main center of interest”, where he was born in a posh clinic now converted into a center of scientology. His house is not far from that of the great American artist Ed Ruscha, whom he sees often.
I allow myself more and more to make fun of everything
Kenny Scharf
When he’s not working in his studio, Kenny bikes, swims and runs with his grandchildren, whom he sees every day. From time to time, as in the past in the East Village, he stops in front of a bulky trash can and picks up flat TV screens on which he paints, used plastic from which, since 1988, he has made garlands to confront us with waste. which are burying the planet.
Faithful to his early convictions, he has not given up on street art. He still happens to take over a wall in a remote American suburb to paint a fresco there for the eyes of schoolchildren. “I believe in art for all, public art… I like that art does not always come down to a financial transaction. I allow myself more and more to make fun of everything, it’s one of the advantages of being old. I do what I have to do and what I like to do: paint. » And if the price of his works follows, great good to him.
At Villa Navarra, in Muy (83): Kenny Scharf, until June 28. And the Matt McCormick exhibition, from July 13 to October 6.
