* (restored)
“I pledge allegiance to the living, and I will defend
art from history. I will rescue art from the future,
from its attrition into taste, and from the speculative
notion that it will become more valuable with time.”
– Rene Ricard
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Life
Rene Ricard was born in 1946 and grew up in Acushnet, Massachusetts. As a young teenager he ran away to Boston and assimilated into the literary scene of the city; by age eighteen he’d moved to New York City and where he was accepted as a protege by Andy Warhol. He appeared in the classic Warhol films Kitchen (1965), Chelsea Girls (1966), and **** (1967), as well as in a number of other noted underground films, including Warren Sonbert’s Hall of Mirrors (1966), among others. He was one of the founders of and original performers in Charles Ludlam’s Theater of the Ridiculous. Having achieved stature in the art world by successfully launching the career of painter Julian Schnabel, Ricard helped bring the artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat to fame. Ricard was played by Michael Wincott in Julian Schnabel’s biopic, Basquiat (1996) In December of 1981 he published the first major article on the artists. The piece appeared in Artforum magazine and was called “The Radiant Child.”
In 1979 the DIA Foundation published Ricard’s first book of poems, a self-titled volume styled on the Tiffany Christmas catalogue. His second book of poetry, God With Revolver (Hanuman Books) was published ten years later. Along with a handfull of one of a kind zines, Ricard has released two other volumes of poetry since then: Trusty Sarcophagus Co. (Inanout Books, 1990) and Love Poems (C U Z Editions, 1999). In 2004, Rene did the album cover for Shadows Collide With People by John Frusciante The majority of Ricard’s poems are now achieved in the form of paintings. He is represented in New York City by the Cheim and Reed Gallery on West 25th Street. Ricard is reclusive and famously mercurial. He lives and works at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City.
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Looks
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Words
The Radiant Child (1981)
Rene Ricard
I remember the first Tags (where is Taki?), Breaking (where you spin on your head), Rapping (where I first heard it). I know the names, but are the names important? Where is Taki? Perhaps because I have seen graffiti, then seen something else, thrown myself on the dance floor, then gone on to dance another way, I say that the reason for abandoning so much during the ’70s was that each fad became an institution. What we can finally see from the ’70s buried among the revivals and now surfacing (Tagging, Breaking, Rapping) was at least one academy without program. Distinct to the ’70s, graffiti, in particular, was the institutionalization of the idiosyncratic that has led to the need for individuation within this anonymous vernacular. This is why the individuals (Crazy Legs) must distinguish themselves.
Artists have a responsibility to their work to raise it above the vernacular. Perhaps it is the critic’s job to sort out from the melee of popular style the individuals who define the style, who perhaps inaugurated it (where is Taki) and to bring them to public attention. The communal exhibitions of the last year and a half or so, from the Times Square Show, the Mudd Club shows, the Monumental Show, to the New York/New Wave Show at P.S. 1, have made us accustomed to looking at art in a group, so much so that an exhibit of an individual’s work seems almost antisocial. Colab, Fashion Moda, etc., have created a definite populist ambience, and like all such organizations, from the dawn of modern, have dug a base to launch new work. These are vast communal enterprises as amazing that they got off the ground as the space shuttle and even more, fly-by-night, that they landed on solid ground. (continued)
Bruce Hainley on ‘The Radiant Child’ (2001): Rene Ricard’s prose coordinates itself by digression, but I won’t digress: What’s at stake for anyone interested in thought’s embodiment is ecriture. Ricard writes, and–neither simply art history nor art criticism–his writing wrongs. Ostensibly, “The Radiant Child” is what some might consider an overly personal twirl by the Factory star (Kitchen; Chelsea Girls), poet (1979-1980; God with Revolver), and downtown eminence through the scenes (“communal exhibitions”; Mudd Club), modes (graffiti/tagging), and references (Warhol, Twombly) that would mark many of the soon-to-be art stars of the ’80s. But even more than being about Jean-Michel Basquiat (Ricard was the first to think about what and how his work might mean) or Keith Haring; or about graffiti and its “dyslexic development in that the second generation is capitalizing on territory pioneered by its lost innovators”; or about the slightly sickening fact that the “crass fast-turnover speculators’ market can have a deleterious effect on an artist’s future career” since “we are no longer collecting art we are buying individuals”; the essay is an attempt to theorize, via Haring’s Radiant Child, which manages to be both a tag with the “same effect as advertising” and “something so good it seems as if it’s always been there, like a proverb,” how “we are that little baby, the radiant child, and our name, what we are to become, is outside us and we must become ‘Judy Rifka’ or ‘Jean-Michel’ the way I became ‘Rene Ricard.”‘ (read the entirety)
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Six poems & a reading
Rene Ricard
RENE RICARD, FAMOUS AT 20 (1979)
… and I still expect to be deferred to
To get in free with a crowd
So I don’t go to places where I have to pay
Sure I miss out on a lot but there was a time
When every doorman in town knew me as an ornament
Wherever I stood
Even though I’m not on the A list anymore
And don’t even get invited to the B parties
I’m still treated well where being
A former underground movie star
Still carries a little weight
I can still turn on the charm
And find a small but enthusiastic audience
Where the star of a more elegant time
Is still appreciated once in a while
By the fossil hunters
I am no longer sought after by the great hostesses
The truth is I don’t care anymore
I’ve seen them come and go
The addresses change but the guest list
Remains the same
The rich are the worst
And the very rich the very worst
They only want the Nobel Prize winners
The Academy Award winners
They are like little kids when they meet someone famous
Or someone even more rich then them
Because the dreams of the poor are only exaggerated
into the grotesque by the rich
Yes those great hostesses who purport to be lion tamers
End up being nothing but head hunters
Laughed at behind their backs
But who wouldn’t
Yeah, it’s a vulgar sprint for the famous
And the nouveau cute who feed to them
All those pretty young kids thrown to the vampires
Some vanish and the lucky ones
Become vampires themselves
I didn’t – that’s all
It’s all right to joke about it
But my stomach turns when I have to wait
In line outside some posh nightspot
And watch my poor friends led like tugboats
While one of those drunken fiends
Prods them into a limousine
What will it get them?
A few grants for a pathetic art project?
This year’s pet? Society’s darling?
You think they’d say “Hi” to try to get me in
But it Le Monde, dearie
You know who you are
All you sycophants and grant hustlers
I will never apply for a grant
Let me starve!
I must look out for my biography
I may be a pariah but I am still
And always will be a living legend
I’d rather starve
Rene Ricard reads (2010)
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Performances
Warhol’s ‘Chelsea Girls’ feat. Rene Ricard
Michael Wincott as Rene Ricard in Schnabel’s ‘Basquiat’
Rene Ricard in Michele Civetta’s ‘After the Fall’
Book launch: ‘Rene Ricard 1979-1980’ in Paris on May 4, 2018
Rene Ricard speaks about the lost Warhol film The Andy Warhol Story (1966):
I made a film with Edie about nine months after she left the Factory. Andy suggested, ‘Let’s do a movie with you as me in it. The Andy Warhol Story. I really hated Andy by then. I realized his was a passive exploitation – that it could be humiliating and horrible. He had been asking me to do this for a long time and I had refused. But one night I took an Obetrol – a very powerful twenty five milligram amphetamine pill, the best. They were very hard to get, rare and very good. It’s a good high, very gay, very lovely speed. That night we were making this Tiger Morse movie, part of a twenty-four hour four-star movie in which I was supposed to be an extra. ‘Don’t do too much talking’, I was told. Well, the pill got me hysterical and I was amazingly good at it. Andy fell in love with me for it. Once again he said, ‘Oh, you’re so good tonight; let’s do that movie I’ve wanted you to do.’ So I finally said okay. The only reason I agreed to do his film was to get even with him. I said, ‘Okay, let’s go to my place and do it.’ I was living in a very beautiful apartment on Fifth Avenue with Avery Dunphy, who was being kept in this luxurious place by a doctor who was mad for prissy Wasps. Mirrored coffee tables, a huge white silk-satin couch.Beautiful, right? What Avery wanted to be was chic -which was all anybody wanted at that time. Having Andy Warhol make a movie in that apartment, even though it wasn’t his, was very chic. I called Avery and told him what was happening – that we were on the the way. I told him, ‘I want orchids. I want the place filled with orchids.’ He asked, ‘Well, where am I going to get orchids at this time of night?’ I told him about a place in the East Sixties that’s open until mid-night. I figured I’d do it right. Right? I didn’t have any money, but at least I could have orchids. Besides, I was trying to get even with Andy. So Avery went out and bought the most exquisiteorchids you’ve ever seen. He bought orchids to die over. I know the difference between good orchids and vulgar ones, and these were expensive and good – from Hawaii or Vietnam, which is where Paris gets its orchids. When we all got to the apartment, Andy asked, ‘Who do you want in the film with you?’ I said ‘I only want Edie Sedgwick. Who else is there in your life but Edie Sedgwick?’ Andy said, ‘I don’t know if we can get her.’ I said, ‘I won’t do it without her.’ I took another pill and I got wired. Wired! There’s a point when you take speed when you talk a lot, and yet there’s also a point where you take too much and you don’t talk. That’s the point that second pill got me to. So Andy got Edie on the telephone and offered to pay for her taxi, and about three hours later Edie turned up. I didn’t want to make the movie when I saw her. She was wearing a dirty blond fall. She looked like the cheapest piece of filth. Here was my Edie, my Edie, and I was making a movie with her – co-stars! No longer was I an extra, and she looked like hell! She was wearing a kind of Marimekko type dress, and mean! She, too, hated Andy at that point: she had been eighty-sixed. When she was with the fairies, she was on speed and she was Edie, she was ‘on’. When she was with Bobby Neuwirth, who was a hetero, she was on downs, and Edie on downs was not pretty. Well, when she arrived at the apartment, the cameras started rolling. I had my own personal vendetta against against Warhol, and so did she. And I was playing Warhol. So I played him the way he behaved to the people under him. She played herself according to how she felt about him then. The things she said to me were horrible. I don’t remember them. I don’t even remember what I said. I was awful. I have nightmares about what I did in that movie… saying things about Andy that were true, how he disposed of people. Paul Morrissey, who was behind the camera, was white with rage. I went through the paintings… how Andy doesn’t actually do the paintings himself. Stupid things like: “Gerard get me an egg. Do you want to know howI paint my pictures, you people out there?’ I’d crack the egg in a glass and then I’d say to Gerard: ‘Cook it!’ That’s how I paint my pictures.’ We did one reel and stopped. Then Andy in his sick, masochistic, dreadful way – after all, here were these two people on camera saying the most ghastly things about him – said ‘Let’s do another reel.’ He had been standing holding his fingers in his mouth, which he does when he’s anxious, and he was loving it… getting the truth. So we did another reel, and in this one it got violent. Edie started it. At some point I gave her some orchids. I said, ‘You’re not dressed up enough for this movie. So do something. Take these flowers.’ She took them and crushed them. I got very upset. And I – me, Rene Ricard, not the Andy Warhol me – was just made demented by that. I love orchids. It was a personal thing from me to her. I said, ‘You really need to fix yourself up, my dear. Put them on you somewhere.’ She cried out, ‘I hate them! I don’t want to be beautiful!’She wrecked the flowers. Edie was hating me. We were both hating each other because of the roles we were playing… I loved Edie, but I couldn’t stand being in a movie with her the way she looked. She was horrible in the movie, and mean. The things I was saying were so horrible. Paul Morrissey suddenly reached out from behind the camera and ripped my clothes off me – a new white silk shirt and new pair of white linen pants. He ripped them. The camera was turning. Paul was out of the frame. I guess he was livid because of the things I was saying about Andy. So we finished the film – two reels. Edie rushed home. I didn’t care about her at that point. My clothes were a ruin. I was a mess. I was wiped out by the pills. Dazed. You’ll never guess what happened then. Andy Warhol at that point was close to a guy called Rod La Rod. He was handling the sound on this film. They asked me to see the rushes in the Factory. I sat there watching it – Paul, Andy, Rod and a few of the other serfs were there -and I saw what they had done to it. Edie’s voice is there, but when I speak, you can’t hear it. They were in glee.
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Visuals
RR’s cover for the John Frusciante album
untitled, 2003
‘So, who left who?’, undated
Roberta Smith, New York Times: ‘Rene Ricard illustrates his own work, usually with a distinctive, if Twomblyesque scrawl, graffiti-type doodles and seductive rainbow colors. So doing, he joins a tradition that includes William Blake, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Henry Miller. The look here is stylish, indulgent and haphazard; the narrative forms range from extended poems to short epigrams like ” ‘I love you.’ The modern way to say goodbye.” ‘What carries the day is, as usual, Mr. Ricard’s seething verbal finesse, which wends its way through a number of largely autobiographical scenes involving sex, art, money and religion. Mr. Ricard writes about anything and on any available surface. ”Starry Night” simply says: ”Jasper Johns. Over 34,000,000 sold.” The poet’s emphemeral work, like his rambling installation, evokes a funkier, less monied and more outrageous period in the New York art world.’
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Last
Rene Ricard @ Wikipedia
RENE RICARD – OBITUARY
The Rene Ricard Story Goes Dark
Rene Ricard (Memorial Site)
Rene Ricard @ Cheim Read Gallery
Book: ‘God With Revolver’
Book: ‘Rene Ricard 1979-1980’
IN MEMORIAM Rene Ricard (1946 – 2014)
Un genre de beauté qui dérange, Rene Ricard, dernier des poètes beat
A Weird Encounter With Rene Ricard
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*
p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Many, many heads are opened up in ‘Ice Cream Man’. Brains are eaten. The whole shebang. Length is determined in the heat of the moment, no? Or it usually for me. So you’re back in Blighty or almost. Three hellish days, mostly tomorrow and Friday, and then a fainting act, or that’s our prognosis. Luck. ** _Black_Acrylic, Harper obviously answered your question. I’ll just add that the local element is that I proudly published that book through my Little House on the Bowery imprint. ** Carsten, Like I said, I haven’t watched that doc, but I think calling BM alternative is really pushing it. It’s for largely heterosexual people willing to pay big bucks to set up a tent or situate their SUVs in a parking lot in the scorching desert and hang out with other ‘open minded’ people for a few days. I know of no impact it’s had in culture, politics, society, etc. It’s like a cross between a glorified campground and a convention except that instead of fans of comic books or sc-fi they’re fans of ‘alternative lifestyles’. The people I know or know of who go to BM are homeowners who still mourn the demise of the Grateful Dead and see it as a way to ‘get their freak on’ once a year. To me it seems inert and self-satisfying pretty much period. But, again, I haven’t watched the doc. ** Bill, His work has been here in various contexts for sure. I’ve had Paul Thek’s work in the thematic posts, but maybe I haven’t done a whole post about him. I should. He’s great. He’s trending right now, so maybe I’ll wait until he’s marginalised again. Me too on the heatwave. At least it’s short. And tonight is the solar eclipse which Paris gets 90% of, so that might be a good distraction. ** Hugo, A fellow ‘donc’ fan, cool. ‘Hogg’ will take you somewhere special. Other than the jetlag, I find plane flights kind of invigorating, or at least after I’d had my first post-flight cigarette. I’ve been mostly my usual self, and I think things are moving along. Nice: the Cioran translating. ** James Bennett, Hi! Derek M is who turned me on to Altmejd’s work. Pretend apartment scams have become a thing? I guess that would happen. I think when I last moved I looked mostly through what was available on established realtors’ websites? Urgh, sorry, man. I should be around until Zac and I go to Stavanger, which should be close to the end of the month. Hit me up post-swelter. Thanks a lot about ‘God Jr.’. Oh, I think to try to explain to myself and to you why its last section is my favorite thing I’ve written will take more concentration and time than the p.s. allows me. In person? Thank you, sir. Are you going to look but not look at the solar eclipse today? I’m not sure how to do that, but I think I’ll try. ** Diesel Clementine, Hi. It’s weird but a lot of the dark rides, etc. I thought were kiddie shit when I was a kid seem sublime to me now. Not sure how that happened. I think I’ve looked at Temu and AliExpress maybe once, so I don’t know what the vibe is there. I’m so not a good consumer. Other than books, clothes, food and cigarettes, I have almost no interest in buying things. My apartment looks like a gallery between exhibitions. Condolences about the break up, but you seem to be making the very best of it. ** laura w., He and I had a long talk, but I can’t remember it in detail to lay it out. After ‘FNoaD’, he ended up working for Bresson for the rest of Bresson’s life, helping with the making of the films and stuff. He had nothing but good to say about Bresson as a guy. I wish I could remember the buts and bolts. The heat is rising here rapidly, but at least it’s not humid so far. I’ll have to turn on my shitty AC any minute now. Other than the heat, things are smooth here, maybe even too smooth. Hang way in, pal. ** HaRpEr //, I didn’t tell anyone I was writing a novel cycle until I was sure it was going to work, which happened when I finished ‘Guide’. Tricycle! I like it. I predict an enlarged dictionary definition of the word. ‘Red Desert’ is really great. Those early Antonioni films need to be more seen and talked about than they currently are. ** Steve, Meaningcore, haha, nice. Uh, I’ll need to pop outside for food and cigarettes and maybe a solar eclipse peek, but I think the indoors will suffice. You overheated there? I’m forgetting where all the waves currently are. ** Thom, Happy that you dug it, man. Fun times for sure on your end, it sounds like. Over here, August is anti-productivity — inhabitants having fled, venues taking a summer snooze, etc. Well, I guess unless one is in the middle of writing a novel, which I’m not. I am determined to make the next three violently hot days fly right by. Let’s see if determination lives up to its reputation. ** Right. I thought I would mark the occasion of the solar eclipse by bringing back this Rene Ricard post. See if that makes sense. And see you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Remember back in 2002 I was at the art school in Chicago and RR was giving a talk about the scene in the 80s East Village. Never had the privilege of seeing anyone deliver a lecture quite like that, the guy’s charisma was enough to obliterate the entire room.
Hey Dennis,
Found out after a vet visit that my little dog is going to be put down on Friday, it’s hard now knowing these next few days are her last, but it’s better than it having it happen randomly. She’s 10 as well, and she’s lived a great life (she hated walking, and we just let her walk on the odd day that she wanted to; otherwise she’d just sit on the floor until we turned around or picked her up). She’s gonna be euthanized at home too, so we can all be with her and not have her be in a vet clinic that would just make her last moments scary for her.
It also means I’m not going to be going to see any films this week in cinemas, nor will I be able to do my intended trip up to Dublin. Have one friend up there that I need to return his copy of your God Jr, another friend who I’d be meeting halfway as they couldn’t come down for my birthday, and another friend who I would be going for a casual date-like coffee/drink with. I may however meet up with some friends from secondary school (high school) that I only ever see briefly, as I met up with some yesterday and a spontaneous plan for Friday evening was made. I might pop in to distract myself and see some people from my past that I would like to get to know properly again.
Speaking of God Jr, saw above you speaking to James Bennett about it and how the last bit is your favourite thing you’ve written, whenever I’m next in Paris (confirmed plan is next March, though I may visit between then) I would also love to hear your rationale behind it, as I do also love that part of the novel but feel like why I like it and why you like it might be different. Maybe not though, and I feel the same way as you do (or at least as much as the author of a text and the reader of a text can feel the same about said text). My friend who has read Closer and The Sluts on my suggestion wasn’t too into Closer and really liked The Sluts but found the subject matter a bit too intense for her might enjoy God Jr, so I might lend her my already-lent copy. We’re similar in a lot of ways and different in even better ways, and I feel like we like to try and push each other into liking the things the other normally wouldn’t haha. She got me a book for my birthday on suggestion from her close friend who I’ve met and spoken to a fair bit: Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert, which is a essay book on pop culture and how the culture in the late 90s and 00s pits women against each other and the insidious misogyny in all of it. The blurb mentions “Madonna to Taylor Swift. #GirlBoss to Onlyfans. The Real Housewives to trad-wives” which are all things or topics I’m personally interested in. I originally had an idea for my dissertation to be about culture and pervasive exploitation has been throughout history, whether from gladiator fights, freak shows, public executions, reality tv, and now social media. I realized quickly however that is more a thesis for a sociology course, but it’s still something I keep tabs on and may write about if I do a sociology masters.
[I wrote out an outline on my view of reality tv and how there’s levels of exploitation depending on the format of the show, but I decided to leave it out incase I do write an essay or thesis and get accused of plagiarizing myself!]
Have you listened to the new Charli record? I would like to know your opinion on it as I could imagine you liking it considering the short lengths and lo-fi nature ala Guided by Voices, but at the same time I could imagine you not caring much for the album. I personally do like it, as I feel Charli is one of the only pop stars who seems to have a good grasp on culture and the tension of trying to be a real person who also has to curate that image to be sold, and the songs touch upon that. It also sonically reminds me of Sky Ferreira and a lot of the electroclash stuff that I either grew up listening to or really love. I think Ariana Grande is also another popstar who seems to have an interesting viewpoint about being a star and has a few songs that are both about romantic relationship and also her relationship with celebrity, particularly on the songs “we can’t be friends (wait for your love” and the new “hate that I made you love me”. I do think she’s a weak songwriter however, and it feels a lot darker and depressing coming from her considering her health, the Karen Carpenter comparison has been overstated but it is eerily similar. I hope she gets proper help and heals, and then does some songwriting classes because there is a great mind and viewpoint in her.
Anyway I’ve been rambling as a bit of a distraction from what’s happening for me, so I’ll leave it at that for today. Hope you’re doing ok amidst this new heatwave.
Rene Ricard is endlessly fascinating. Sometime in the last twenty years or so, I went to an exhibition of his paintings in NYC, and I liked them a lot. It reminded me a lot of Letterist or Situationist works of art produced in the 1950s at that time. And his poetry/texts really stand out to me. He seems to me a perfect figure for Warhol and his world. There is a need, I feel, for a biography of Ricard. That would also be a great gossipy read!
Re. Burning Man: mostly heterosexual? That seemed off so I checked, & according to the last census the straight/queer split is almost 50/50 these days. And the ticket costs blowing up is due to corporatization. Like I said, there’s plenty of folks who want to bring it back to the days when it was affordable & less organized.
And no impact? I never thought I’d sound like someone defending BM one day but to say it hasn’t penetrated the culture strikes me as odd. I mean they basically construct a city for a week that functions on principles that are certainly alternative: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, communal effort, leaving no trace etc. Even heavily countercultural music festivals don’t abandon the market economy for a week. And maybe it would be more accurate to say that BM has absorbed various alternative lifestyle ideas & ideals rather than birthing them, but at least it’s a permissive testing ground. And I have heard of people who then try to apply some of these principles to the outside world.
I gotta say I’m a bit surprised. The mutant vehicles & various art installations there do nothing for you either? That aspect is less appealing to me personally, but given your love for rides & theme parks & conceptual art I would’ve thought you’d go for some of it.
But yeah like you said, the doc. It’s certainly worth watching because it explores the phenomenon from a bunch of opposing angles. I always regarded BM as a cool countercultural happening that got ruined by money & the wrong people, but the doc made me appreciate how & why some people feel so devoted to it.
Later I’ll head out to the beach or a nearby hill to experience the eclipse. Curious what 95% is like. Next year we’re getting the full 100 here in southern Spain.
Maybe I just need to soothe my soul with that, then. I haven’t allowed myself to watch that sort of thing since, I dunno. Maybe I’m just in the mood for a really mean-spirited movie. I consider Roth to be relatively that.
This thing is around 8k words now, and additions are being made, but I don’t foresee it blobbing up to five or ten times that length. Trying to take the redraft sentence by sentence for once, tick tock. There’s this one that I keep moving around and changing tense and letting grow appendages and adjectives and then pruning them like I’m the main character in ‘Middle C.’ ‘Even there the day’s todayness kept lapping in like just another of the waves shivering out or just another weak orgasm, and the detail faded into the shape of all the todays to come, as flipping channels on an old television would always give way to the same static.’ The thrust of it is lode-bearing but in its expression I’m struggling to stop it from sounding like ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ as written by Danielle Steel. (Not that I have much of anything against Danielle Steel, but hers isn’t the texture I’m after.) And maybe I should zap the orgasm simile. Although it works better in context.
I am now blighted by Blighty, yes. As with chez toi, tomorrow will be the real fucker. The heat here is so much more filthy and fuzzy than Croatia’s 40C+, it’s unreal. I’ve been thinking a little more seriously about pulling a James and moving back to Paris, although my EU-passport-less-ness would make that a little more than an overnight project. And I don’t like the sound of that rental situation.
Hey Dennis,
It’s a deal re: in person lowdown on the God Jr. final act.
By the time I realised the eclipse was a thing to be excited about, the special glasses were sold out everywhere. And apparently it’s not something to fuck with if you don’t have the special glasses. So I didn’t. I was walking up the hill in Belleville with my back to it as it was happening though, and I got to observe some people’s faces as they watched it. They seemed charmed but not awed. Did you see it? Thoughts if so?
xo moi
What is very lovely about the blog is seeing progenitors of particular modes that (whilst maybe overplayed now) I’ve always responded to –much better than the English degree I received and the art degree I always wanted lol. I think I’m gonna be a big fan of Rene Ricard !
I didn’t get glasses in time and I did look at the sun directly but it was that overcast so I don’t think it did anything permanent… I really didn’t see much so if I’ve fucked my eyesight it’ll be a real bummer. I bumped into my recently ex lover’s partner on the bus and he said it’s completely fine to look at. Some lesbians, next to where me and my husband were sitting, lent me a bit of coloured cellophane that supposedly protected us. Didn’t feel the need to fuck about with a cereal box or collinder or whatever — imo that’s not really looking at much of a muchness. Did you manage to see much yourself ?
Starting a re-read of My Loose Thread tonight now husband has finished reading :p
Hey. I didn’t manage to get a real view of the eclipse. It didn’t do much where I am because it was cloudy. It just got a little shady for a moment. Shucks.
Wonderful post. I’ve been meaning to read Rene Ricard’s poems. I distinctly remember a scene in ‘Chelsea Girls’ where he’s sitting on a bed with a bunch of superstars and reading ‘Giles Goat Boy’ while very sensually eating an orange, and I think that’s how I got around to reading Barth.
Interesting, I didn’t know that you weren’t overly public about the cycle until ‘Guide’ came out. Yeah, since I read them in order with that knowledge I could see what each book did to the one that came before it and I agree with you that it’s one work.
Every book I’m writing in this trilogy is formally very different and I’m not selling it to any publisher as part of a trilogy, because I don’t even expect to get published by the same place three times. It’s not exactly a detail that’s just for me… but at the same time it is. It was originally all just going to be one longish book but I found a way to divide it. Some of the same characters appear but none of them have any memory so they’re totally static and only exist in the moment they’re on the page. It being a trilogy is just a helpful way for me to sculpt something in my head. I’ve already written the first book, and if God forbid, I can’t get this thing off the ground, I’m going to print it myself or just make it a pdf or something, because Jesus Christ.
rene richard is someone i’ve actually never heard of, so this was a thrilling post. definitely one of the more artistically interesting warhol superstars- his poetry especially has that specific chatty, informalness i have an inclination towards in poetry (though i do also enjoy highly formal and complex pieces are well!)
listen, too smooth is better than the opposite! though maybe not for the arts. then again, that is a stupid stereotype and the truth is it’s really hard to create when the world is crashing down around your ears. perhaps it should be something along the lines of inspiration from pain and productivity when not in pain anymore, but that gets a bit close to that writing chestnut of “write from the scar not the wound” and i dislike that a lot because some of the greatest books have been written with blood all over the pages- you can disagree, obviously, but i always thought period was one.
i hope you had a nice eclipse, if you practiced it. it’s fun to see people get excited about things like eclipses even if you don’t care about space. the heat wave’s return sucks, but at least it isn’t that long! august is flying by, though, and autumn will be here before either of us realize. around here, the stores have their halloween stuff out already so that’s something i’ve been enjoying looking at even if i’m not planning on buying anything.
Rene’s vow to defend art from history really resonates with me. It’s such a bold stance, acknowledging the ways taste can shift over time. Feels like a reminder that art should be about the present experience rather than future speculation. worth a look
Rene’s perspective on art being tied to the living experience is such a refreshing take in this era of endless speculation. It feels like he’s urging us to free art from the shackles of future valuation, which can often stifle creativity. I find myself drawn to that idea more and more, especially as discussions around art continue to evolve. For inspiration, I often refer to local art history archives to deepen my understanding of these conversations.
Rene Ricard’s perspective on art, especially his insistence on living in the moment rather than deferring to historical judgment, is incredibly thought-provoking. It’s such a reminder that the value of art should be felt, not stored for future speculation. I remember reading a compelling piece about the evolution of artistic taste in a free art journal that captures similar sentiments. REPLY
This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks! recommended