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Original poster commemorating Rene Ricard’s 1990 exhibition Paintings 1989-1990 at the Petersburg Press Gallery, New York. The image reproduces his painting, Mal de Fin, 1990. Ricard embellished a framed thrift store painting of a sailboat at sea, scrawling “Mal de Fin” in black paint over scribbled gold pastel and daubed pink paint. French for “Bad End”, Mal de Fin may be a play on “Fin de siècle”: the end of century, ending of an era and the beginning of another, and “Mal du siècle”: sickness of the century, a phrase attributed to the 18th/19th century French writer François-René de Chateaubriand. Chateaubriand’s notion of turn-of-the-century ennui no doubt resonated with the famously moody artist.
This poster is not previously owned and comes from the archives of Petersburg Press.
