Albert Napoleon Ricard was born in
Boston and grew up in
Acushnet, Massachusetts, near
New Bedford. As a young teenager he ran away to Boston and assimilated into the literary scene of the city. By age eighteen, he had moved to New York City, where he became a protégé of
Andy Warhol. He appeared in the Warhol films
Kitchen (1965),
Chelsea Girls (1966), and
The Andy Warhol Story (1966). As a performer, Ricard was a founding participant in the Theater of the Ridiculous collaborating with
John Vaccaro and
Charles Ludlam. He also appeared in the 1980
Eric Mitchell independent film
Underground U.S.A. (1980), as well as numerous other independent art and commercial films. Having achieved stature in the art world by successfully launching the career of painter
Julian Schnabel, Ricard helped bring
Jean-Michel Basquiat to fame. In December 1981, he published the first major article on Basquiat, entitled "The Radiant Child," in
Artforum. Ricard also contributed art essays to numerous gallery and exhibition catalogs. He was immortalized by
Jean-Michel Basquiat in the drawing entitled
Untitled (Axe/Rene), representing the tension that existed between the two. Warhol called Ricard "the
George Sanders of the Lower East Side, the
Rex Reed of the art world." From the mid-1960s Ricard contributed writings to numerous independent poetry magazines and anthologies. In 1979, the
Dia Art Foundation published Ricard's first book of poems, an eponymous volume styled on Tiffany & Co. catalog. The fact that the turquoise-covered book of poems appears in photographs taken on the beach in
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency by
Nan Goldin illustrates its ubiquity as summer reading in 1979. His second book of poetry,
God With Revolver (
Hanuman Books) was published ten years later, edited by Raymond Foye. The same year he contributed poems to
Francesco Clemente: Sixteen Pastels (London: Anthony D'Offay). Ricard released two other volumes of poetry:
Trusty Sarcophagus Co. (Inanout Press, 1990), which featured his poems rendered in paintings and drawings and was the basis of an exhibit at the Petersburg Gallery, New York City; and
Love Poems (C U Z Editions, 1999) as a collaboration with artist
Robert Hawkins who provided drawings for the book. Ricard also saw publication of single-poem works as limited edition artist books:
Opera of the Worms with paintings by
Judy Rifka (1984),
Cecil (2004), and ''In Daddy's Hand'' with artist
Rita Barros (2010). Beginning in the late 1980s Ricard's poems were often rendered in paintings and drawings. His work was the subject of several solo gallery exhibitions in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as being represented in many group exhibitions. In 2003, Percival Press published the full-color monograph
Paintings & Drawings, illustrating a collection of visually rendered poems by Ricard. In 2004, Ricard created the album cover for
Shadows Collide with People by musician
John Frusciante. Ricard was portrayed by
Michael Wincott in
Julian Schnabel's biographical film,
Basquiat (1996). He lived at the famed
Hotel Chelsea in New York City intermittently for 40 years. ==Death and legacy==