In what has become legend, Kenny Scharf, the self-proclaimed “Pop Surrealist,” was a few days away from moving out of his living and work space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, that he called his Cosmic Cavern, and decided to throw the last in a series of parties he had been throwing for years, known as Cosmic Cavern A-Go-Go.
On that particular evening, Glori Cohen, an art advisor and collector, happened to be in attendance and told him, “You can’t take this down. This has to be a museum.”
And so the artist called the movers and told them he wasn’t going anywhere. The Cosmic Cavern Museum was born.
At the opening reception of the exhibit “Kenny Scharf” now on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art through July 10, several of Scharf’s friends were on hand and recalled their experience attending those Bushwick parties in Scharf’s psychedelic basement cavern, where you were barred from entering unless you were also painted in day-glo.
Scharf has installed his Day-Glo environments at the 1985 Whitney Biennial, MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, and the Portland Art Museum, Portland Ore., (2015), and will be at MoMA next year.
Here at NCMA, the Cosmic Cavern, Closet #29, provides a psychedelic escape. You enter the room-sized installation through black velvet curtains and are transported into a multi-media day-glo, black-light, neon fantastical world of painted and repurposed recycling (some would say garbage) — that brought a sense of delight to everyone who crossed the threshold.
Among the visitors were three young girls from Roslyn, Hayden Levy, Izzy Levine, Cameron Levy, who themselves create abstract art, and pronounced it “awesome” and “favoriteness.”
Indeed, the visitors become part of the art, especially Scharf’s friend and fellow artist from Bushwick, Allison Goldenstein, wearing a hand-painted dress that seemed to meld into the pop art background.
According to Art News, “Cosmic Cavern A-Go-Go began at the height of the 2008 recession, when the artist decided to turn his flood-prone basement into one of the glow-in-the-dark environments that have been his trademark since the 1980s.
Scharf’s Cosmic Caverns had unexceptional beginnings — at the time they were, as he says, mere ‘Cosmic Closets’— in a room of the apartment near Times Square where he was living with his friend, the late artist Keith Haring. “I just started putting garbage in there and painting it fluorescent, happened upon a black light, and it just kind of started,” says Scharf.
Scharf feigns insult when I ask if it is intended as nostalgia. “It’s not nostalgic — I did it last week. It’s what I do.”
Exceedingly approachable and hospitable to the waves of fans and friends who came to the opening Friday, March 18, he spoke at length about his own monumental work, “Pop Renaissance” which calls to mind Dali not just for its monumental size — covering all four walls— but for its surrealist imagery. (Not surprisingly, he had an exhibit, Kenny Scharf; Pop — Surrealist, in 1997 at the Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Fla., among his many gallery and museum exhibitions.)
In 2001, Scharf says, he was invited along with other, predominantly New York artists, to showcase contemporary art in historical spaces Pordenone, Italy, a town named for the Italian mannerist painter, Giovanni da Pordenone (1484-1539).
Scharf covered the ceiling with four 33-feet long canvases, which hung there for two years. When it was time to take the works down, much had been ruined by pigeon droppings, so Scharf cut the damaged parts away, restretched into new frames and added layers of silkscreen.
“In adding to the actual physical layer to the painting, this element references an increasingly image laden, confusing world and the effect of a consumer society on the environment, another of Scharf’s preoccupations,” according to the notes provided for the exhibit, which was curated by Nassau County Museum of Art Director Karl E. Willers. “While reworking the painting in Los Angeles, Scharf was surrounded by neighborhood signs in Arabic and Korean, adding another layer of visual imagery as well as a political, pro-diversity message to the work.”
Scharf is fond of picking up trash and recycling ‘found objects’ in his paintings: a gesso puddle is poured, objects added, and then painted.
Emerging with the New York City graffiti and street art movement of the 1980s, Kenny Scharf (b. 1958) is known for his vibrantly colorful large-scale paintings and exuberantly playful installations. His imagery draws upon pop icons, media advertising and consumer culture of the 1960s, including TV cartoon characters such as the Flintstones and the Jetsons. Kenny Scharf showcases major paintings and sculptures from throughout the artist’s career.
Highlights of this exhibition are the expansive mural Pop Renaissance that surrounds the viewer, a version of the artist’s Cosmic Cavern club-like environment, as well as a re-creation of the artist’s former Brooklyn studio complete with spattered walls, painted furniture and other workspace ephemera.
Speaking of his art, Kenny Scharf commented, “I believe the artist has a social responsibility to engage others in a thought process that ultimately brings the creative process into everyday life thereby enhancing the quality of our experience.”
Works by Scharf are in the collections of such major New York institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Jewish Museum. Internationally, works by Scharf have been collected by Mexico’s Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; and the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
A companion exhibition, Glamorous Graffiti, looks at the work of Kenny Scharf’s contemporaries in the exciting New York graffiti and street art movement of the 1980s. Including a 1988 portfolio of five silk-screened prints by Keith Haring, a range of graffiti styles are explored through the work of the artists Jean Michel Basquiat, Lee Quiñones, Crash, Futura 2000, Toxic and many others. Films documenting early 1980s graffiti and urban culture are included in the exhibition. The artists A-One, Daze, Dondi, Koor, Lady Pink, Noc, Richard Hambleton and Rammellzee appear in the films Downtown 81 by Edo Bertoglio, Wild Style by Charlie Ahearn and Style Wars by Henry Chalfant and Tony Silver.
“Scharf wasn’t as much of a street artist but was of their generation and the cultural phenomenon of graffiti,” Willers says, acknowledging an ascendency of appreciation of graffiti artists of that generation – “pioneers who inspired artists all over the world.
“It brings back the concept of public art, but so much public art is commissioned by a government. Graffiti manifests a freedom of expression — a “people’s art” that is not just “public art” (read “institutional” or “establishment”),
Graffiti is “an invigorated art — out there in the streets, a generation of artists. Graffiti is the visual equivalent of hip hop, rap music, break dancing, a uniquely American art form, like Jazz, a uniquely American endeavor.”
In conjunction with the exhibition of Kenny Scharf, which is sponsored by TAHARI Arthur S. Levine, the Museum is offering related public programming for adults and family groups. Museum docent Riva Ettus presents lunchtime talks on Kenny Scharf and his career on April 14, May 12 and June 9.
A new program, “Sketching in the Galleries,” will be offered Tuesdays, 1-2 p.m., April 5, May 3, June 7.
Visitors are invited on June 19, 12-4 p.m., to watch Kenny Scharf paint a new outdoor mural for the future Manes Family Art & Education Center on the Museum’s grounds.
While the Kenny Scharf exhibition is on view, the artist’s vibrant and imaginative works serve as inspiration for other family and children’s programs, including weekly Neiman Marcus Family Sundays at the Museum, as well as Nature + Kids = Art on April 17, Spring Break for Art on April 26-28, and Summer Picnic Party on June 26.
Scharf will also be on hand for the museum’s Ball, Saturday, June 11, “An Evening of Glamorous Graffiti,” which this year for the first time, will feature a Cosmic after party for the “junior” members (20 and 30-somethings) in the Cosmic Cavern with Scharf (ticket info at 516-484-9338, developmentoffice@nassaumuseum.org).
An extra added treat is seeing one of the gallery rooms with newly exposed original wood paneling and picture windows.
Indeed, the experience of seeing art in such close proximity in the mansion that was home to Childs and Frances Frick, son of industrialist and art collector Henry Frick, is always special.
Most of the 145 acres that are now the Nassau County Museum of Art originally belonged to poet, lawyer, conservationist, political activist, patron of the arts and preservationist William Cullen Bryant, who settled in Roslyn in 1843.
The long-time editor of the New York Post built his home, Cedarmore, and founded Roslyn’s public library.
In 1862, he built a cottage for his friend and fellow poet, Miss Jerusha Dewey (you can see the cottage when you explore the hiking trails).
In 1900, Lloyd Stephens Bryce purchased Bryant’s ‘Upland Farm’ and commissioned architect Ogden Codman, Jr. to design Bryce House, the present mansion. Henry Clay Frick, co-founder of U.S. Steel Corporation purchased Bryce House in 1919 as a gift for his son, Childs Frick, a Princeton graduate who became a vertebrate paleontologist and naturalist.
Exploring the Grounds
Be sure to make time to explore the grounds of this magnificent estate:
Sculpture Park: Approximately 40 works, many of them monumental in size, by renowned artists including Fernando Botero, Tom Otterness, George Rickey and Mark DiSuvero among others, are situated to interact with nature on the museum’s magnificent 145-acre property.
Walking Trails: The museum’s 145 acres include many marked nature trails through the woods, perfect for family hikes or independent exploration.
Gardens: From restored formal gardens of historic importance to quiet little nooks for dreaming away an afternoon, the museum’s 145 acre property features many lush examples of horticultural arts. Explore expanded gardens and beautiful new path to the museum.
Nassau County Museum of Art is located at One Museum Drive in Roslyn Harbor, just off Northern Boulevard, Route 25A, two traffic lights west of Glen Cove Road. The museum is open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Docent-led tours of the exhibition are offered at 2 p.m. each day; tours of the mansion are offered each Saturday at 1 p.m.; meet in the lobby, no reservations needed. Tours are free with museum admission. Family tours and art activities are offered Sundays from 1 pm; free with museum admission. Call (516) 484-9338, ext. 12 to inquire about group tours. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors (62 and above) and $4 for students with ID and children aged 4 to 12. Members and children under 4 are admitted free. The Museum Store is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Call (516) 484-9337 for current exhibitions, events, days/times and directions or log onto nassaumuseum.org.
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