RENE RICARD | UNTITLED

Estate of Keith Haring, New York (acquired directly from the artist)

The Keith Haring Foundation (by bequest from the above in 1990) 

Esteemed art critic, poet, painter, and cultural provocateur Rene Ricard was an enormously influential figure in the cultural world of New York in the 1970s and 80s. Andy Warhol referred to him in 1984 as “the George Sanders of the Lower East Side, the Rex Reed of the art world” (Pat Hackett, ed., The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York 1989, p. 551). Ricard’s criticism for Artforum and Paris Review was instrumental in promoting the fledgling talents of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Having grown up a gay, gangly teenage aesthete in 1950s Boston, Ricard moved to New York age 18, where he met Warhol through the artist Al Hansen, and soon became a frequent face at The Factory, where he would sit in their “happenings” wrapped in furs. It was through Warhol that Ricard met Keith Haring, and the two artists quickly became friends. As Gil Vazquez, board president of board president of the Keith Haring Foundation, recalls, “I was at [Keith’s] studio once when Rene came to visit - it was really very strange. He had this zip up sweater but it zipped up past his head. He was sitting in the middle of his studio with it zipped up and Keith was saying to me it was too much to explain to you.” The encounter is emblematic of Ricard’s unapologetically avant garde persona.