Rene Ricard

I feel fortunate to have briefly shared New York with Rene Ricard, despite not having met him before his death in 2014. The longer I live here, immersed in the city’s cultural ongoings, the more reverence I feel for those who shaped the creative landscape far before I ever imagined participating in it myself. For Ricard, the legendary assortment of vibrant, unforgettable personalities he was surrounded by working out of Andy Warhol’s Factory as a young man no doubt proved formative. After all, it’s hard to deny that the poet’s magnetism, charm and wit are the stuff of New York myth. His writing on art and culture was imbued with an infectious wonderment (once wielded in a 1981 Artforum essay in support of a then-barely known Jean-Michel Basquiat), and his role as a catalyst for originality and creativity made him a pillar in the many intellectual circles he frequented.

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