RENE RICARD

Albert Napoleon Ricard was born in Boston and grew up in Acushnet, MA.
As a young teenager he ran away to Boston and assimilated into the literary scene of the city. By age eighteen, he had moved to NYC, where he became a protégé of Andy Warhol, also appearing in Warhol’s films, such as Chelsea Girls. As a performer, Ricard was a founding participant in the Theater of the Ridiculous collaborating with Charles Ludlum.

In the 80s, he wrote a series of influential essays for the magazine, Artforum.
Having achieved stature in the art world by successfully launching the career of Julian Schnabel, Ricard then helped bring Jean Michel Basquiat to fame. In December 1981, he published the first major article on Basquiat, entitled “The Radiant Child,"
in Artforum.

Socialite-at-large Rene Ricard made art with a wit that allowed him to blur boundaries between disciplines, resulting in an expansive and symbiotic practice. This is evident in the way Ricard incorporates text into his paintings and prints, rendering poignant poetic confessionals and acerbic barbs in lush, gestural brushstrokes.

Warhol called Ricard "the George Sanders of the Lower East Side, the Rex Reed of the art world." From the mid-1960s Ricard contributed writings to numerous independent poetry magazines and anthologies. In 1979, the Dia Art Foundation published Ricard's first book of poems, an eponymous volume styled on Tiffany & Co. catalog. The fact that the turquoise-covered book of poems appears in photographs taken on the beach in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency by Nan Goldin illustrates its ubiquity as summer reading in 1979.
He is now immortalized in author-artist, William Rand’s best selling book, "Rene | The NY Diaries.”

Ricard has exhibited in such cities as NY, London, and Los Angeles, and his work is in the permanent collections of the British Museum as well as numerous private collections including those of Brice and Helen Marden, William Baker Rand and Francesco Clemente.

Then if God is Love 1989
Large framed oil on paper
Signed lower right hand side, 42 x 37 in

Poem
2004
Acrylic on textured painting board from Pearl Paint
Signed lower right hand side
36 x 24 in
From the collection of Marcia Resnick

The Unhappily Dead
1989
Large framed stone lithograph and etching on Arches paper Petersburg Press (in Rand/Rene book)
Signed lower right hand side RR
36 x 26 in