Andrew Huber
Head of Department
Lot 9W,○
KENNY SCHARF(B. 1958)City of the Future
2005
2005
Amended
19 May 2022, 17:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$983,175 inc. premium
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Randy Reynolds
Specialist, Head of Sale
KENNY SCHARF (B. 1958)
City of the Future
2005
oil on canvas in artist's frame
unframed: 108 by 150 in.; 274.3 by 381 cm.
framed: 119 by 161 in.; 302.3 by 408.9 cm.
This work was executed in 2005.
2005
oil on canvas in artist's frame
unframed: 108 by 150 in.; 274.3 by 381 cm.
framed: 119 by 161 in.; 302.3 by 408.9 cm.
This work was executed in 2005.
Footnotes
Provenance
Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami
Private Collection, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Santa Monica, Patrick Painter Gallery, Kenny Scharf: Outer Limits, 2005
Undoubtedly the largest and most ambitious painting by Kenny Scharf to ever be offered at auction, City of the Future (2005) is a monumental, museum-quality work by one of America's most iconic artists. An ascendant star of the Downtown Street Art scene of 1980s New York alongside Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Scharf's enduring influence on global artists spanning media and genres including Neo-Pop, graffiti and Comic Abstraction has been profound and evident in the careers of George Condo, KAWS, and Takeshi Murakami, to name but a few. Scharf's brand of Pop Surrealism – a term coined by the artist – is completely unique, and no better utopic vision exists of Scharf's artistic universe than in the present work. An exceptional opportunity to acquire a staggering and emphatic work by Scharf, resplendent in an artist's frame that is unique to the painting, City of the Future has all the hallmarks of an iconic piece by an artist whose career is synonymous with 1980s New York and continues to be championed as a leading painter of his generation.
Born in Los Angeles in 1958, Scharf moved to New York City in 1979, inspired by Andy Warhol's work that Scharf felt had opened the field to a new kind of experimentation and timbre – a precocity and amusement that went starkly against the academic tendencies of late Modernist abstraction, Minimalism and Conceptualism. In Scharf's nascent practice there emerged a zealous employment of color and style, synthesizing an assortment of anthropomorphic characters that became the artist's lifelong cast. Nodding to early 1960s comics and television cartoons, the influence of 'The Flintstones' and 'The Jetsons' was immediately apparent in his early work. Hosting parties with Keith Haring – whom he shared an apartment with at the time in 1980 and 1981 – Scharf took his art to the walls of Manhattan, assembling his Cosmic Caverns with Day-Glo and UV paints that formed the settings for the disco parties that are practically coupled with the legacy of the East Village art scene.
In 1981, Scharf had his first solo exhibition with FUN Gallery – a space that Scharf not only inaugurated with his show, but he is also credited with naming. Opened on East 11th Street by underground actress Patti Astor, FUN Gallery was one of the most important spaces in the Village scene that helped launch the careers of Fab 5 Freddy, Futura 2000 and Keith Haring, as well as showing Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. Reminiscing about the cauldron of creativity that was the East Village in the early 1980s, Rene Ricard commented "the excitement [...] is that we've seen it here before the media killed the fun. [...] When I look back at the 1980s what I'll remember as the high point is Kenny Scharf's opening a few weeks ago at Patti Astor's FUN Gallery" (Rene Ricard quoted in Jay Gorney, The East Village, Latest Lure for the Art World, The Washington Post, 12 February 1984, online). Deeply embedded and one of the central protagonists of this circle, Scharf epitomizes the vibrancy of the New York Avant-Garde that instantly drew the attention of Diego Cortez, Jeffrey Deitch and Bruno Bischofberger, who attended FUN Gallery to get access to the ascendant stars of the New Wave and Punk movements. His breakthrough inclusion in the Whitney Biennial in 1985 was the institutional watershed for Scharf, and his career truly took off in earnest, with global exhibitions following at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich, and Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo.
Scharf's relationship to the cosmic, the utopic, and the hyperreal worlds of graffiti and comic characters have produced some of the most singular and electrifying images of the last few decades. "We were promised a great world, and then all of a sudden [...] it wasn't 'The Jetsons'," stated art critic Carlo McCormick, who was the art critic for the East Village Eye in the 1980s (Carlo McCormick quoted in Alex Greenberger, Kenny Scharf Documentary Spotlights an '80s Downtown New York Cult Figure in Search of Fun, ARTnews, 25 June 2021, online). To McCormick, Scharf's vision of a swirling proto-municipality has as much to do with the Post-War dream of a millennial future as the hard realities of a New York Downtown that Scharf found on his arrival from Los Angeles. In the nightlife and underground of Manhattan, he developed a new spirit for painting – something inhuman and otherworldly that seizes upon childlike ambition and an unreserved energy.
In City of the Future, this is brought to fruition on a scale rarely seen by the artist. Capturing a vivid cityscape hovering over a swirling Van Gogh-esque dusk sky, the painting evokes myriad aesthetic corollaries, from Yves Tanguy's paintings to Calder's balancing Stabiles, and the Post-War utopic visions that were influenced by the emergence of the Space Age, inflecting the designs of cars and household items. Encased in a custom artist's frame rendered in an ornate gold, the present work's grandeur wonderfully imbues a sense of optimism and awe, an affect that the artist consistently strives to impart in his audience. City of the Future is as surreal and timeless as it is Scharf at his most performative – a brazen visionary and creator of worlds.
Since his meteoric ascendance in the 1980s, Scharf's career has gone from strength to strength, and his cultural esteem has never been greater. Following a collaboration with fashion house Dior in 2020 on a new collection, a 2021 documentary that celebrated Scharf's career to-date – including his intense friendships with Haring and Basquiat – in addition to being honored recently at the TriBeCa Ball, he is undoubtedly receiving long overdue praise. With works in global museum collections that include the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Sogetsu Museum, Japan, Scharf's art historical place is highly regarded by institutions and private collectors alike.
Saleroom notices
A third party has provided an irrevocable bid on this lot (lot 9), which Bonhams will execute during the sale at a value that ensures the lot will sell at the level of the irrevocable bid amount unless there are any higher bids. Bonhams and/or this irrevocable bidder may benefit financially if the lot is sold in excess of the irrevocable bid amount, and may incur a loss if the lot fails to so sell at such level. The irrevocable bidder, who may bid in excess of the irrevocable bid amount, will be compensated if (s)he is not the successful bidder, based on the final hammer price, and will not otherwise be compensated if s(he) is the successful bidder.
