Rene Ricard

Love in Brooklyn by Rene Ricard poetry painting

1990

Ashes of Roses is Rene Ricard's mauve-colored map of Rivington Street between Suffolk and Clinton Street, with a white arrow pointing to the word mofongo, indicating a Puerto Rican r...

Frustration is center stage, written in cursive: "It's one of those days nothing works out right -- bump into any sharp corner – can’t tell flesh from white or brown from…or green fr...

A fluid wash of bubblegum pink fills the surface of this painting. Ricard has written in bright yellow, blue, and vivid silver the following: So how do you be friends w/a whore? Business being business/Ethically, a ho can’t rat on its tricks; so if the ho is hohoing yr husband Damned if you’ll ever find out. March 26. Whore sharply contrasts the beauty of silver, yellow, and pink with Rene’s pithy, obscene pronouncement. The pink ground is applied in a sheer wash, like Male Cinderella’s background, and the artist’s cursive shimmers in the same silver as One Shoe One You / True Love, Size 3?, and This is not a thanksgiving pumpkin. While Whore shares enticing formal qualities with other works in this group, the text snaps us to cold reality, down into the gutter with a bump. Ricard is happy to visit a fairy tale, but doesn’t stays in the fantasy for long. There’s an intimacy to this work’s smaller scale which compels the viewer to lean in and decode Ricard’s poetry. The artist’s outsized signature is with initials in dark blue, which pop out against that beautiful saturated pink. Canvas floater frame, in maple with .25 inch moulding. Whore is part of a group of works dating from 1989-1990 as Rene Ricard prepared for Mal de Fin at the Petersburg Gallery, New York, in 1990, his very first one-man exhibition. Born Albert Napoleon Ricard, he moved to New York in the 1960s at the age of 18. With that relocation, Albert died, and Rene was born. Instantly adopted into Andy Warhol’s glittering orbit, Ricard thrived in the city, with its heady concentration of art, culture, and debauchery. In New York Ricard found the milieu where he would shine. He acted in underground films, playing Warhol in the artist’s own Andy Warhol Story. He became a renowned poet and writer, published in the Paris Review and Artforum. In typically wry fashion he explained how he became a painter: “I began adding images [to my poetry] because I’ve always liked to draw and paint. And it was hard to find junk-store paintings of the right quality, things that could support some writing, so I just started making the images myself. Unfortunately, people really like that, even though I far prefer just the writing.” Ricard drew on his vast knowledge of literature and art history, weaving these references together with bursts of autobiographical poetry: what the New York Times termed his “seething verbal finesse.” Ricard, having spent years in the Factory’s milieu, learned from Warhol’s creative strategies. Warhol created images quickly with screen printing, with no regard for perfection. Duplication was the method and the ideology. Ricard, too, worked quickly: urgency was part of his visual language of looped cursive and scribbled colors. He often borrowed a lithographic plate or silkscreen from already-completed works, printing the matrix on canvas or paper to create backgrounds for new works (Size 3’s red printed background may be an example of this). He appropriated thrifted paintings and discarded items such as a pinboard or a piece of insulation, so long as the object in question had a flat surface upon which to work. The two artists were both outsiders to the art world in a sense—Warhol coming from the world of design and Ricard, a bona fide author, but both intuitively understanding how to compel the viewer. As Warhol anthologized consumerism, Ricard catalogued desire. For example, Size 3 and One Shoe One You feature Ricard’s take on Warhol’s famous shoe drawings...

A large scale abstract interior scene with bold black, white, red, pink, green, white and orange patterns and brushstrokes, based on an abstract oil painting. Pink and purple dots, y...

This 61" x 44" mixed media painting by the artist XVALA is from his series 'Pandemic Collection: 6.' The painting was created with iridescent oil stick and spray paint on a screen print of a Star Wars poster. The abstracted "Basquiat-inspired" work depicts a silver robot with red eyes and large white teeth on a purple and blue background with the text 'cyber punk' in red at the bottom of the painting. 2020 twisted human reality in a number of ways no one could ever have predicted. XVALA pays tribute to this by melding the original Star Wars movie poster with the unexpected weirdness of the 21st Century. By combining a classic sci-fi villain with a modern symbol of literal Cyberpunk, XVALA shows the COVID-19 virus aimed straight toward the earth with a mission to destroy it. Exhibited during the Pandemic Paintings exhibition at the Meme Ranch August 7th, 2020. XVALA's art illuminates the hidden fallout spawned from our high tech Internet age. His' Fear Google' campaign exposed the decay of privacy and 'No Delete' used hacked nude celebrity photos to highlight loss of control over personal information. The artist has worked with trash from the homes of Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and others, as well as dirt from the graves of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. The dirt appears in the 'New World Order' collection as part of a pyramidal, 3D printed, living ant farm...

Artist: Darryl Hughto, American (1943 - ) Title: Oh, Susanna Year: 1981 Medium: Silkscreen with Acrylic Painting, signed l.r. Image Size: 39 x 22 inches Size: 42 x 30 in. (106.68 x 7...

John Hitchcock uses the print medium with its long history of social and political commentary to explore relationships of community, land, and culture. Hitchcock’s works on paper an...

John Hitchcock uses the print medium with its long history of social and political commentary to explore relationships of community, land, and culture. Hitchcock’s works on paper an...