Paintings and Drawings
Santa Monica, CA: Perceval Press, 2003. 1st Edition. Slim octavo, publisher’s illustrated paper-covered boards, illustrated endpapers.
First edition monograph on poet, art critic, and downtown tastemaker Rene Ricard's visual art. Ricard was a fixture at Warhol's Factory, a regular and influential contributor to ArtForum magazine, a prolific poet and painter (frequently text-based), and was revered and feared for his remorseless aperçus: "he was our Catullus, writing elegant and obscene poems of love and hate with brevity and dispatch. But maybe it was best to avoid him?" (Raymond Foye, Brooklyn Rail). In the late 1980s, he began to convert his poems into oil paintings, employing thrifted prints, found canvases, and personal material. The first publication to showcase Ricard's visual art, this volume comprises paintings and drawings spanning a twenty-year period, with an emphasis on his gestural oil-on-canvas poem-paintings rendered in smoky black, chalky grey, fiery red, and his trademark "poison green." Illustrated with color plates. Published by actor Viggo Mortensen's publishing project Perceval Press. No dust jacket as issued. Small dent to top edge of boards, else fine.1. Item #11617
$200.00