The Latin/World Music band Pink Martini have recovered their stolen van which was handprinted by the artist Kenny Scharf. Only problem, the van has been over painted destroying the murals worth an estimated £600,000 by today’s prices of the artist’s work. The van was taken on Sunday from a downtown Portland parking garage. The band put out an alert on Facebook which was shared on social media thousands of times. The van was spotted in several parts of the Portland area. And eventually a band members received a call on Wednesday. But they soon discovered that someone spray-painted over the van’s valuable artwork.
Thomas Lauderdale, band leader said; “ I was holding onto hope that the crooks would not paint over the artwork”.
Thomas Lauderdale, band leader said; “ I was holding onto hope that the crooks would not paint over the artwork”. However, to their dismay, that artwork is gone”. “I’m not quite sure where to go from next, because a white van is just a white van, but a white van with Kenny Scharf art, is totally different. It’s so sad, you know, the thieves didn’t know they had a million dollar van,” Lauderdale added.
The artist says in his artist’s statement, My ambition as a professional artist is to maintain the course that I set 30 years ago by establishing my work in the fields of painting, sculpture, and performance. Every project I undertake is building on my past experiences. My original approach is unchanged; it is a personal challenge to produce the best work possible every time. One very important and guiding principle to my work is to reach out beyond the elitist boundaries of fine art and connect to popular culture through my art. My personal ambition has always been to live the example.
Scharf was most known for his work in the East Village, Manhattan art scene of the 1980s, with shows at Fun gallery (1981) and Tony Shafrazi (1984), before seeing his work embraced by museums, such as the Whitney, which selected him for the 1985 Whitney Biennial. Art scribe Demetria Daniels writing in Downtown Magazine said about his work that it… “leaves you with hope, joy, play and optimism, and a sense of love….”It was also during this period that he did the cover art for the B-52s’ fourth studio album, Bouncing off the Satellites. Scharf was friends and former roommates with graffiti artist Keith Haring.