Kenny Scharf

Kenny Scharf emerges in Andy Warhol’s diary as both a maker of vivid images and a catalyst for shared excursions. His painted Cadillac, gallery show, phone calls, and gatherings connect art to the streets, studios, and social networks of New York. Seen through Warhol’s day-by-day observations, Scharf’s presence also brings the art market’s competing pressures into view: his paintings climb in price while Keith Haring worries about the consequences of being valued too highly.

An Artist in Motion

The diary first presents Scharf through a car as distinctive as a moving artwork. He had driven his Cadillac from Los Angeles and painted it; by the time he invited Warhol for a ride, champagne glasses and monsters had joined its decoration. Scharf and Haring came along, and the car drew the attention of police officers following behind out of curiosity. Its mobility mattered: Scharf’s work was not confined to a gallery but traveled through the city, gathering spectators as it went.

The drive took the group uptown to East River Drive and 90th Street, where they saw Haring’s mural. Warhol recorded its dimensions as about two and a half feet wide and two hundred feet long, extending roughly three blocks. Haring had painted the surface white and added small black and red figures. Warhol thought the mural might have worked better in silver and doubted that it improved the city’s appearance. The contrast between Scharf’s exuberantly decorated car and Warhol’s cool appraisal of Haring’s public work shows how the diary places art inside ordinary movement through the city, where a work can be conspicuous without winning the observer’s approval.

Scharf also appears in the account of a studio visit with Alba Clemente and Jean-Michel Basquiat. After seeing Francesco Clemente’s work, Basquiat wanted to paint; the ensuing studio session lasted two hours. This entry does not describe Scharf as a participant in that work, but it locates his artistic circle among painters, studios, and the social encounters through which one artist’s work could prompt another’s. Across the diary, Scharf’s own paintings receive more direct attention when Warhol visits his exhibition.

Gallery Prices and Artistic Competition

In December 1984, Warhol and Jon Gould went to Tony Shafrazi Gallery for Scharf’s show. There, Warhol encountered a young man who said he was Scharf’s lover and had been planting flowers outside Warhol’s house. The detail gives Scharf’s gallery opening a social perimeter beyond the exhibition itself: personal ties, small acts of attention, and the watchers around Warhol enter the same account as the paintings.

The show also occasioned a precise comparison of prices. Scharf’s paintings were selling for $30,000. Haring, represented by the same gallery, felt uncomfortable because he had not wanted his own prices to rise too high; his works were selling for $8,000, $10,000, or $15,000. The figures make the difference tangible without resolving it. Scharf’s higher prices signal strong demand, while Haring’s unease exposes the tension between commercial success and an artist’s preferred limits. Warhol’s entry records both as part of the same gallery scene rather than treating price as incidental to artistic reputation.

Scharf’s exhibition continued into the night with a dinner at New York Area nightclub. The venue’s new theme was Religion, an attempt to take over the theme associated with Limelight. The diary thus places the show within a culture where galleries, parties, and nightclubs overlap, and where an exhibition can lead directly into another kind of spectacle.

Calls, Gatherings, and a Circle of Friends

Scharf often enters the diary by telephone. In December 1984 he called to say that he was picking Warhol up and that Sean Lennon was in the car. Warhol could not get ready promptly, heard a commotion outside, and hesitated before going out. Meanwhile, Jean-Michel Basquiat called from Sweden and became upset when he heard that other young people were at Warhol’s house, which Basquiat had never visited. Warhol explained his preference for unplanned visits, then eventually went out with a camera. Sean took photographs of him and spoke about not knowing how to behave when photographers were present. Scharf’s planned pickup therefore sits inside a revealing contrast: his casual arrival helped set in motion an outing, while the competing calls exposed Warhol’s discomfort with advance arrangements and the unequal access others had to his home.

Nearly two years later, Scharf called with news that Martin Burgoyne was in Florida with his family and seriously ill. What the family had thought was measles was not, and Warhol connected the uncertainty to people in their circle who had become ill and received the best care money could buy but had still been among the first to die. He suspected that Madonna’s newspaper-reported book purchase for a sick friend might have been for Burgoyne. The entry does not establish a diagnosis; its significance lies in the fear and uncertainty surrounding the news. Scharf was the person who brought it to Warhol’s attention.

In September 1986, Scharf called again to invite Warhol to a birthday party for his wife, Teresa, in a park near a rowing bridge. Warhol went with Stuart Pivar. The party began with few people present, then filled up; seven birthday cakes appeared, and Haring and Alba Clemente, with her young daughter, were among those who arrived. The entry’s sequence—from a sparsely attended gathering to a crowded celebration—makes Scharf’s invitation an entrance into a larger artistic and social circle. Scharf and Teresa were also expected at an Interview dinner in February 1987, another instance of their presence in Warhol’s social and professional orbit.

Opportunity, Risk, and the Diary’s View

A later phone call shows Scharf approaching Warhol not with an exhibition or invitation but with a business proposal. He tried to persuade Warhol to buy land in Brazil. Warhol had been ready to send a check, and Paige Powell was interested in joining him and visiting the property for a week. The appeal was its low price and the promise of having a coconut tree. Fred Hughes objected that the arrangement involved black-market sales, lacked a contract, and offered no real proof of ownership. Warhol also noted reports of killings and the possibility that the land could simply be taken away. The diary preserves his wavering response: the risks were serious, yet the bargain still tempted him. Scharf’s proposal thus reveals a practical, speculative side to their connection, as well as the competing influence of Warhol’s enthusiasm and Hughes’s caution.

Across these appearances, Scharf is defined less by biographical exposition than by what he sets in motion: a ride to see a mural, a gallery visit that makes rising prices visible, calls carrying both invitations and troubling news, and a proposed investment that tests Warhol’s appetite for risk. The diary’s episodic form keeps the evidence local and unembellished. Scharf recurs not as the subject of a continuous personal narrative but as a recognizable presence in the overlapping worlds of art, friendship, nightlife, and business.