Kenny Scharf The “New and Improved Ultima Suprema Deluxa” is a Kenny Scharf-modified 1959 Cadillac sedan.Kenny Scharf sees a world colored by ravenous dinosaur toys, rocket ships and outrageous Cadillac fins. As an artist, Mr. Scharf is known for his Day-Glo disco installations and swirling candy-color cartoon murals, but he has also emerged as an avid car customizer over the last 30 years, transforming classic cars into moving, fantastical pop sculptures.
On a sky blue 1959 Cadillac he calls the “New and Improved Ultima Suprema Deluxa,” his cartoon characters seem to be swimming through waves that taper down its angular tail fins. The interior is covered in Mr. Scharf’s handiwork as well and features pastel floor mats and a disco ball in the trunk. Toy dinosaurs, Flintstone characters, airplanes and crowns festoon the dashboard. The car’s every surface has been decorated, down to the yellow faces and pink zigzags painted on the door panels. The themes Mr. Scharf explored on his Cadillac have carried over to his other pieces, too.
“I have this same theme going on in the cars and also almost everything I do,” Mr. Scharf said from his studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he works when not at his Los Angeles studio. “A lot has to do with the future and with the past. I always combine dinosaurs, which I like because they connote fuel and oil and gasoline consumption. I like rockets and jets and science fiction. I like having dinosaurs eating jets in the cars.”
Mr. Scharf’s fascination with the aesthetic of American sedans was hatched in California, where he was exposed to the work of the car customizers Ed Roth and George Barris.
“We had this ’59 Chrysler; it had these really big side fins,” Mr. Scharf said. “When I was a little kid, I called it the Lucy car; it looked like Lucille Ball laughing. Being a young kid with an imagination, all cars had names and faces. Some were scary, some were happy. The whole idea of personalities on inanimate objects stayed with me, obviously.”
Mr. Scharf cultivated his psychedelic pop style on a household appliance line he called Van Chrome in the early 1980s. He painted a blender, the precursor to the Fun Gallery décor in the East Village. The process expanded to the walls of an apartment closet he shared with Keith Haring, which he called the Cosmic Closet. It was swathed in black light. His disco-inspired installations have broadened into the Cosmic Cavern, which he has recreated in studios, museums and galleries.
The Cadillacs he has customized are an offshoot of his neon vision; he said cars were an integral part of his work. Mr. Scharf acquired his first Cadillac, a 1961 model, from a friend in New York for $5,000 in 1983. He covered it with rainbow-color outer space imagery and drove it across the country to display in an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. He also showed the car in 2010, at the Art in the Streets exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He also customized a 1973 Cadillac for the founder of the Sogetsu Art Museum in Japan. Other projects include a Ford Galaxie, a Cadillac ambulance, a golf cart and an Airstream trailer — on display at the Wynwood Walls in the Miami Design District — called the Cosmic Carestream.
Mr. Scharf said he doesn’t render the imagery in advance; he would rather let his mood guide the strokes.
“I do everything on my own,” he said. “I don’t draw it out. I approach the car and do the background with spray. I look at it and say, ‘I’ll put this guy here on top of that guy.’ I usually like to accentuate the forward motion of the car’s design, which is very easy when you’re talking a ’50s or ’60s car, because they were made that way.”
Cadillac fins have always been compelling for Mr. Scharf, and he said he had built them into cars that did not have them.
“They are completely unnecessary,” he said. “They are a design to instigate fantasy. That’s the only purpose they serve. I love that.”
Not all car fans are into Mr. Scharf’s unique automotive aesthetic. He once took his Cadillac to a classic car gathering at the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, Calif.; he said that it might have been too funky for the crowd there, which tends to prefer more orthodox hot rods and classics.
Mr. Scharf describes himself as a car nut, and has collected a number of classics. He recently sold the 1963 Ford Thunderbird that he had for 20 years to make room for a ‘59 Cadillac. But his love of big American iron hasn’t stopped him from being a bit more practical on a day-to-day basis, more in tune with today’s environmental concerns. In Los Angeles he drives a Prius. In New York, he opts for a bicycle.
Mr. Scharf’s newest paintings will be on display in a solo exhibition that opened Thursday at the Paul Kasmin Gallery. He has also begun working on his newest automotive modification, using a 1974 Pontiac sedan.
“No expenses will be spared,” he said.
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