Rene Ricard

Rene Ricard is an American painter and poet. Since the early 1970s, Ricard has been one of America's most controversial arbiters of taste. His work has appeared in influential literary, art, and popular publications and has contributed profoundly to the cultural discourse of his era.

As a teenager, Ricard left his hometown of Acushnet, Massachusetts and became part of Boston’s 1960s literary scene. By eighteen he had moved to New York City, where, as a protégé of Andy Warhol, he became part of the scene surrounding the Factory. He appeared in such classic Warhol films as Kitchen and Chelsea Girls, as well as films by many other independent young directors. As a performer, Ricard was a founding participant in the Theater of the Ridiculous, collaborating with John Vaccaro and Charles Ludlam.

By the early 1980s Ricard had achieved status in the art world through his influential essays. He is credited with launching the careers of several well-known painters, most notably Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. His breakthrough 1981 essay “The Radiant Child,” written for Artform magazine, is considered to be at the forefront of twentieth-century writing about art.

In 1979 the Dia Art Foundation inaugurated its publishing arm with Rene Ricard 1979-1980. The fact that this turquoise-covered book of poems appears in photographs taken on the beach in Nan Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency illustrates its ubiquity as summer reading in 1979.

This book was followed ten years later by God With Revolver, published by Francesco Clemente under the imprint Hanuman Books. Trusty Sarcophagus Co., published in 1990 by Inanout Press, was the first publication to reproduce his poems as paintings. Love Poems, published in 1999 by CUZ Editions, brought Ricard's poems together with illustrations by the London-based artist Robert Hawkins.

In June 1990, Ricard had a show at the Petersburg Press, which was then located in the Baker Building on Prince Street. The show, which included bouquets of fresh fading flowers in front of Ricard's paintings, generated a lot of attention and was well-received by critics. It was written about in “Talk of the Town” in the The New Yorker magazine.

In the late 1980s Ricard began to develop his poems into paintings, a process which he continues to explore. Occasionally Ricard paints directly on antique prints or found paintings, a method he used when creating the 2004 CD cover for Shadows Collide With People, an album of songs written and performed by John Frusciante. Paintings and Drawings, a full color monograph of works created over a twenty-year period, was published in 2003 by Perceval Press.

In his present work Ricard has expanded his ambition, working in a larger scale (up to 8 feet) with fully integrated imagery and text. His next exhibit will be in April 2008 at Scream Gallery in London.

Rene Ricard lives and works in New York City.