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Rene RicardMichele Maria: bright yellow red Maria Callas opera artist portrait with poetry 1989
1989
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 bright yellow, red, and black portrait print of opera singer Marie Callas and artist Michele Zalopany, Ricard effortlessly traverses text and the pleasure of color.
An expanse of yellow forms the background of Ricard's tribute to the opera singer Maria Callas. Her portrait is painted in profile with bold, black marks. The artist Michele Zalopany was Rene’s close friend, and he produced this portrait honoring Michele, and the opera singer Maria Callas, jointly. An expanse of bright yellow forms the background of this bold portrait in profile, painted with bold, black marks. Within her portrait, Ricard wrote the names of some of her most well-known operas and arias, such as Norma and Casta Diva. As in many of Ricard’s works, his freely-written cursive evokes emotion, and the inky black marks increase the drama of this portrait in profile. At the bottom of the composition, "Michele Maria" is written in red.
Ricard was a poet and art critic who published numerous books of poetry, and his increasing use of text in his work over the 1980's reflects this interest in the written word. 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 name in pale peach ink, the same size as the title, 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 40 in. x 26.5 in. / 101.6 cm x 67.31 cm. Lithograph with silkscreen and relief on cream Rives BFK Heavyweight paper. Edition 28. Signed by the artist lower center. Numbered lower left in pencil; dated 1989 lower right in pencil
- Creator:Rene Ricard (1946 - 2014, American)
- Creation Year:1989
- Dimensions:Height: 40 in (101.6 cm)Width: 26.5 in (67.31 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: LU1211212698922
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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