[5] Having achieved stature in the art world by successfully launching the career of painter Julian Schnabel,[6] Ricard helped bring Jean-Michel Basquiat to fame.

Warhol called Ricard "the George Sanders of the Lower East Side, the Rex Reed of the art world.

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.

In 2003, Percival Press published the full-color monograph Paintings & Drawings, illustrating a collection of visually rendered poems by Ricard.

[2] Prior to publication of the issue, Ricard was so secretive about the subject of the essay that whenever asked who he was writing about he would reply, "Not about Julian Schnabel!