Painter Kenny Scharf, born in LA, was steeped in the city’s car-centric culture, familiar with a fender or hood being a canvas. Over the past decade, he’s been painting mischievous-looking cartoons on cars for free. The characters look like they’re zooming by — with big grins on their faces. Scharf estimates that he’s done 300 vehicles worldwide, most of them in LA. It’s all part of his project Karbombz. The last car he painted will be on display at Beyond the Streets gallery.
Scharf tells KCRW that his project involves no money, and his clients signed a waiver agreeing not to sell their finished cars as art. However, a few people violated his rules, and “there'd be like a half a car in an art fair somewhere,” he says.
The project began when Scharf was creating a mural in Mobile, Alabama, and someone drove by, asking him to paint their car. He quickly did the favor with spray paint, and later published an Instagram post asking if others wanted their cars painted too.
Scharf notes that each car gets a different treatment. “If I look at a car, if there's a dent, I fix them by painting something on it. Basically, I make the cars move when they're standing still.”
His cartoon creatures’ faces express joy or a sense of “grrrrrrrr, get out of my way!” Sometimes the face is aggressive on the driver side and happy on the passenger side.
Scharf also created two characters: “One is Yikey, which is an inverted Nike symbol — not that I copied them, I've been doing it even before Nike. … The other one is called Speedy, and he's the one that some people accuse of looking like a condom, which I don't know why they say that. But they're both going very fast, and they have different expressions.”
He continues, “And then, of course, you've got the front and the back. … Headlights — eyes. And grills — mouths. The whole thing, it's like I can't get out of it.”
Libby Figueroa poses in front of her car. Courtesy of Kenny Scharf Studio.
How did he come up with these designs? Being raised in LA, cars had “crazy faces,” which made an imprint, he says. “They just [were] screaming at me, these faces.”
Back then, cars were exciting and full of fantasy, Scharf says, but now “they’re all boring and they need help.” That’s why his practice is to “get art out of the regular, boring everyday.”
“Go in a traffic jam. Is there anything more boring than sitting in traffic? … All you listeners, just paint your car. It doesn't matter if you know how to paint. Can you imagine how fun it would be if everybody's car was painted? It would make the whole city incredible. We'd love traffic.”
Scharf’s other principle is to steer away from the perceived elitism of modern/fine art, and make the industry widely accessible.
“The elitist art world … would look at art for certain people. And then the ‘masses,’ ‘they're not going to understand it, and they're not really supposed to.’ Well … I don't believe that art should be dumbed down for the masses. … I think everyone should have a chance at opening their mind to different ways of looking at things.”
The way you communicate or present the art matters too. He notes that only certain people see a show at a gallery, whereas thousands see a mural by the freeway, and “they don't know anything about art history, it doesn't matter.”
Vishal Narayan stands in front of his truck, “The Good Karma.” Courtesy of Kenny Scharf Studio.
As for Scharf’s background, it’s rooted in pop art. He even cohabited with Keith Haring, and he introduced Jean-Michel Basquiat to Haring in the late 1970s.
When he moved from LA to New York, Scharf recalls, he was hanging out in the School of Visual Arts (SVA) cafeteria, where Basquiat asked to see his portfolio. After showing a painting, Basquiat said, “You're gonna be famous.”
“He had such an intensity. It was amazing,” Scharf says. “And then we became friends, and I started going around the neighborhood with him. .. We discovered we lived a block away from each other. And then I introduced Jean to Keith. Keith was going to SVA as well. So Jean was trying to get into the School of Visual Arts, and I would sneak him into the lobby. I even forged a note from a teacher to get him in the lobby. And he would tag the whole lobby. … Then they figured out who he was, and they wouldn't let him in. True story.”
Then the trio of Scharf, Basquiat, and Haring gained a mentor in Andy Warhol. “We were all very inspired by how Andy changed how you can be an artist, and what an artist can be. He was so many things. He was a filmmaker … scene maker … canvas maker.”
Scharf recalls making and selling postcards with his friends, then one day, Basquiat said he sold a postcard to Warhol, who was all about the intersection of art and commerce, having opened a physical store to sell his work in the 1960s.
Two decades later, Scharf Shack opened. And now, companies are approaching Scharf for collaborations. He’ll soon release products he did with Hot Wheels.
Stefan Haves poses in front of his car. Courtesy of Kenny Scharf Studio.
Today, Scharf says he’s carrying on the artistic influences from his friends. Haring and Basquiat both died in their late 20s-early 30s — the former from AIDS, the latter from a heroin overdose. “They were way, way too young. Our art is very different, but a lot of the philosophies of how we approach art and the public were very similar. So I feel like I'm carrying that torch that I learned back then,” says Scharf.