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Rene Ricard
Dangerous Liaisons: Yellow, red, Tiffany blue abstract print with poetry

1990

About the Item

Touched by the influence of Andy Warhol, champion of a young Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rene Ricard served as enfant terrible of the 1980s New York art scene. In this abstract painted composition, Ricard combines expressive poetry with vibrant color. A bright yellow forms the background for two rounded rectangles printed in Tiffany blue, a favorite color of Ricard. Rimmed with bright red, the rectangles contain a hand-written poem in red cursive. Below the title, which is printed across both frames, the poem reads: "It is inconceivable that a Group of people Would conspire to plot the Destruction Of an individual. Who Would Want to Harm one? / In the House of Lords alone, I can count up to...Not even a memory,...One Could become not even a memory, Say a consortium of enemies / Posing as collectors Bought up an Artist's entire output...A match, a Flash and good Bye posterity." Rene Ricard was known to destroy his own art -- here, as in many of his works, he speaks obliquely about his own self-destructive excesses. Dangerous Liaisons includes another recurrent Ricard motif: the shapes of two inked and printed lithography stones as the poems' frames, suggesting the symbiotic expressiveness of poetry and visual art. Here the heavy limestone slabs used to print lithographs function as literal and figurative frames for Ricard's urgent cursive and emotionally-charged poetry. Ricard was a poet and art critic who published numerous books of his poetry, and his increasing use of text in his work over the 1980's and early 1990's reflects this interest in the written word. He viewed visual art and poetry not as separate mediums but as interconnected means of expression that could enhance each other. Ricard's confessional hand-painted and hand-written poetry is almost always accompanied by the artist's outsized signature, integrated into the composition, or placed at its center. Here, Ricard signs his initials in the plate, and again on the paper in a flourish of red pencil, displaying the artist's unabashed confidence and flamboyance. This confidence (and Ricard's bedroom-eyed allure) attracted the attention of Andy Warhol, and the young Rene (formerly Albert Napoleon Ricard) became his protege. He would appear in three Warhol films, even playing the Factory founder himself in "Andy Warhol Story". Warhol would later call the famously acid-tongued Ricard "The George Sanders of the Lower East Side, the Rex Reed of the art world." By the early 1980s, Rene Ricard was a fixture in the New York art scene, not only as an accomplished artist, but as a critic. Penning enlightening and poetic essays for Artforum, he turned his attention to rising stars such as Julian Schnabel and Alex Katz. Ricard famously wrote the first major article on Jean-Michel Basquiat. “The Radiant Child” is credited with launching Basquiat’s career, and is considered a seminal contemporary art essay. A photograph of the lithography stones from which Dangerous Liaisons was printed is published with an accompanying poem in Ricard's 1990 book of poetry Trusty Sarcophagus, published by Inanout Press and printed in Italy. (pp 54-55)
  • Creator:
    Rene Ricard (1946 - 2014, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1990
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 16.5 in (41.91 cm)Width: 23 in (58.42 cm)
  • Medium:
    Lithograph
  • Movement & Style:
    Contemporary
  • Period:
    1990-1999
  • Condition:
    This print is not previously owned and has been stored in the archives of the publisher since its publication.
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU121129192122