Kenny Scharf

Born in Los Angeles, Kenny Scharf rose to prominence in the New York art scene in the 1980s as part of a dynamic group of artists including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He has since returned to California, but he has retained the playful Pop aesthetic for which he is internationally renowned. In addition to paintings, Scharf has made animated shows for Cartoon Network, bronze sculptures, customized cars, and many installations. Kenny's paintings immerse viewers in a word of visual stimulation, where Tanguyesque spacescapes or lush jungles serve as a metaphor for the power of unbounded imagination. This book takes us on a personal visual history of Scharf's experiences and activities in the downtown art scene, where he met idol Andy Warhol and hung out with Basquiat and a colorful cast of his contemporaries, up to his most recent work, which has never been published. His work is instantly recognizable, with idiosyncratic cartoon creatures popping up in the oddest of places: in paintings, on functional objects, or piled up on top of each other to form huge totem-poles

Richard Marshall is an independent curator, consultant, and art historian based in New York. Between 1975 and 1993 he was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Carlo McCormick is senior editor at Paper magazine in New York. Ann Magnuson is an actress and performance artist living in Los Angeles.