Rene Ricard slapped my mom in the face at a party in the 80s in front of Julian Schnabel. She thinks it was because he was in love with Schnabel but I think it’s because Ricard was as unpredictable and volatile as his reputation suggested. She also thinks he hated women but since everyone hates women I’m not sure that’s a relevant charge. Subsequently, Ricard’s name wasn’t spoken in our household despite his proximity to my parents’ social circle and artistic prolificity. He has a diverse oeuvre that includes painting, art criticism, poetry, and acting. A good friend of Andy Warhol, he appears in multiple of his films and is credited with helping launch the careers of Schnabel, Haring, and Basquiat. I wasn’t interested in Warhol or any of the pop artists since my parents were part of the Ab Ex persuasion and I was their loyal disciple.
Until my early 20s, when I began to develop my own intellectual tastes, I was completely ignorant to Ricard’s work. The first poem of his that I read, “He’s no good,” resonated immediately. The anger, disappointment, and self-loathing present in the 1979-1980 poems challenged me to recognize these feelings in myself as worth writing about. At that time, post grad, I was struggling to cope with the disappointments I felt about life, particularly those related to my gender and love life. I thought these concerns were shallow and embarrassing and had no idea how to translate them into meaningful work. Ricard told on himself in his writing, calling out his own self-destructive beliefs and behaviors: his addictions to beautiful young men, partying, drugs, and a fear of aging. He made the ugly parts of himself, the parts that many of his peers admittedly found difficult in real life, beautiful on paper. Despite being a polarizing figure in the New York art scene, he was beloved. Maybe that’s why his writing often questioned the value of virtuosity. He’s no good / but we don’t love them / because they’re good / do we.
-Rachel Willis