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Rene RicardMonet Portrait of Jeanne Duval: Ricard drawing vintage typewriter love poetry1989
1989
$3,000
£2,245.34
€2,599.96
CA$4,169.51
A$4,696.28
CHF 2,432.03
MX$57,034.42
NOK 30,892.44
SEK 29,304.09
DKK 19,399.30
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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. Here, Ricard traverses visual art, text, and the pleasure of sculptural trompe-l’œil with this printed drawing of melancholy hand-written and typed love poetry, composed with natural earthen shades of antique white and brown.
Monet Portrait of Jeanne Duval is presented in the form of a letter: its envelope carries the title and artist's name, printed on a pale pink label embellished with white fleurs-de-lis and a delicate gold frame. The "letter" folded up within has been printed to look distressed and burned. At the top of the sheet, the title is handwritten. Below, a poem in typewriter typeface reads:
"in a cab across 23 street, you're wearing your lips squeezed into the little moue I call your whore lips and a white 'I Love New York' sweatshirt new but dirty / You got who knows where. Remember I told you the story. You made me think of Jeanne Duval, the whore Baudelaire adored. Down the East River Drive . I told you the story, remember? I described Monet's portrait of Jeanne Duval
It must've been a dress Monet loved. He used it over and over. It was the year of the major crinoline, how we picture Scarlett Ohara. The enormous skirt and high tiny waist - (rather, 'a high and tiny waist') set off by a Little Bolero. The sleeves are long and tight, the neck high and edged with (like the sleeves) narrow lace. It is the whitest dress ever painted Orgady [sic] or dotted swiss, the white set off by on edges and flounces by black. She's half-draped across a small canape, white silk ankles crossed and tiny low, black slippers, the whole surmounted by a shrunken head and black Banana-curl wig / June 26 1989 R. R."
The poem probably refers to Manet's 1862 portrait of Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire's Haitian-born muse, who was known as the "Black Venus." In the painting, a woman with a fan reclines on a couch, one foot emerging from the diaphanous cloud of her skirt. Ricard's poem is ambiguous, halfway between love letter and lament. This print was published in Ricard's 1990 book of poetry Trusty Sarcophagus along with the printed poem.
The artist came up with the idea for this print after he had been carrying a folded piece of paper with this poem tucked underfoot in his shoe. With its purposeful scuffing and “burn” marks, Monet Portrait of Jeanne Duval is designed to look like a well-worn letter, giving the impression of a precious document that has been read over and over again. The addition of hand-written cursive reflects the emotions expressed in Ricard’s poems. He adjuncts this expression with a personalization: “To T” in the lower left refers to Tony, his lover at the time.
As a published poet and art critic, Ricard often blurred the lines between poetry and visual art. 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 the letter with his typed initials, and again across the paper in 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.
Paper 30 x 20 in. / 76.2 x 50.8 cm
Folded, and presented in an envelope 25 x 25 cm. / 10 x 10 in. Lithograph on Nepal Heavyweight paper with natural fibres. Edition 50: this impression 47/50. Signed by the artist lower center in pencil; numbered 47/50 center left in pencil. Title handwritten by the artist top center
- Creator:Rene Ricard (1946 - 2014, American)
- Creation Year:1989
- Dimensions:Height: 30 in (76.2 cm)Width: 20 in (50.8 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- 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: LU121125790322
Rene Ricard
Born Albert Napoleon, artist Rene Ricard 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. He acted in underground films, playing Warhol in the artist’s own Andy Warhol Story, and was lauded by the New York Times in 1981 as “splendid” for his turn in the independent film Underground USA. He was a renowned art writer who launched the careers of artist like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring with his poetic essays. In New York, Ricard found the center of his life. In his memoir “Rene Ricard” painter and close friend William Rand calls the artist “the Baudelaire of Avenue C…a brilliant, elusive and glamorous underground figure” adding that Rene’s stomping ground, the East Village, was a “…Halloween show all year round: squatters…hustlers, freaks…” Ricard could be found at any given time of day or night walking these streets, linking up with an endless stream of friends and acquaintances. The city’s underbelly was a bustling hub of culture: one could find artists, critics, gallerists and poets such as Nan Goldin, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, Bill Stelling, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Allen Ginsburg mingling in the same gritty milieu. Like the rapidly-changing city, Rene's life was in flux: he moved between living situations and struggled intermittently with addiction, leaving a trail of makeshift canvases and alternately bleak, tender, and acerbic poetry. He had gained prominence and fame as an art critic and poet throughout the 1960s and 70s, but his nascent painting career took shape after gaining the attention of the Petersburg Press Gallery. They were to present his first exhibition in New York in 1990. The upcoming show proved to be a motivating force, harnessing Ricard's raw talent by providing him with studio assistants and a place to work at Petersburg’s studio on Lafayette Street. The show was to be entitled “Mal de Fin”. French for "Bad End", Mal de Fin may be a play on "fin de siècle": the end of an era and the beginning of another, and "mal du siècle": sickness of the century, a phrase attributed to the 18th/19th century French writer François-René de Chateaubriand. Chateaubriand’s notion of turn-of-the-century ennui no doubt resonated with the famously moody artist, and Ricard’s name change may have been inspired by Chateaubriand’s first name François-René. Mal de Fin’s body of work reflected not only his wild lifestyle, but the artist’s interest in spirituality, literature, and art itself.
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