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Lithograph on Sekishu Kozogami Turu paper. Edition 30. Signed by the artist center left in pencil; numbered center right in pencil.
Abstract yellow and black Rene Ricard print with hand painted poetry on handmade paper. Printed in black ink at the top of the sheet and framed with a thin line, the artist’s loose handwriting reads: “I dreamed / I had a baby / Every time I cut off / its head three more / grew back.” Towards the bottom of the sheet, Ricard’s signature is printed in yellow and marigold orange, along with “June 1989”. Ricard’s cursive is reminiscent of Japanese Sumi-e ink paintings, an association enhanced by the use of handmade Japanese paper.
Ricard was a poet and an art critic and poet who published numerous books of his poetry, and the increasing use of text in his work over the 1980’s reflects this interest in the written word. He viewed visual art and poetry not as separate mediums but as symbiotic modes of expression. Ricard’s confessional hand-painted and hand-written poetry is almost always accompanied by the artist’s outsized signature, integrated into the composition, or placed at its center. Here, Ricard scrawls his signature across the page of I Dreamed, displaying the artist’s unabashed confidence and flamboyance.
