“Sonnets from the Portuguese,” an exhibition by Rene Ricard, is on view at the Vito Schnable Gallery in New York City, through June 25th. The closely-packed show presents many oil on linen works based on Ricard’s phrases in his hand-painted text, many over figurative painting taken from photographs. In this very recent work Ricard continues his unique blend of poetry and painting seen at Cheim & Read in 2003 and in his "What Every Young Sissy Should Know" show at London’s Scream Gallery in 2008 (also curated by Vito Schnable). The phrases used in these engaging works are in turns pithy, humorous, faux-confessional, and evocative. He even repeats some lines (Poison / Just put the idea in their head / They’ll starve to Death) from previous works, though painted in a very different manner.
In the 1970s he was a regular at (Andy Warhol’s) The Factory, and appeared in some renown Warhol films of the period. He is also known for his writing on art in the 1980s, where he is credited with helping expand the early career of Julian Schnable (for better or for worse), and (as I have found my self repeating a lot lately in this blog) his December 1981 Artforum article “The Radient Child” was very important in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s transformation from underground figure to art star. Rene describes this show as about 16 small canvas in "poison green" with a very small poem painted on each, several double-height canvas with longer poems, and some very large canvases. To me, the works play off connotations of graffiti-like defacing of art, conversational language that might be overheard while looking at art, and recent concrete poetry. Although coming from different places, and ending with very different results, there is a strange overlap in the separate idiosyncratic combination of painted imagery and words in the work of Basquiat, Ricard, and John Lurie. Looking at Ricard’s work in Chelsea also makes me think that perhaps creating your poems in the concrete form of paint on canvas displayed in galleries is one of the few ways these days a poet can make some money from their work. A handmade, limited edition book by Rene Ricard and Rita Barros will be on sale at the gallery. The show is at Vito Schnable, 522 West 23rd Street, NYC, 10014 (between 10th & 11th Ave, Chelsea) from May 13th to June 25th. For more information, go to http://www.vitoschnabel.com/index.html (at the opening)
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