Roger Ricco, New York - MEET THE COLLECTOR Series Part Fifteen
I have known about the Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York ever since I became interested in this field. I then met Roger Ricco when he was manning the Gallery’s booth at the Outsider Art Fair in Paris in 2014 I believe. Such a warm and friendly man, we have stayed in touch since and I meet up with Roger when I visit New York. Read on to hear about his involvement in this field across the years.
Roger Ricco
1. When did your interest in the field of outsider/self taught begin?
It began around 1979-80 when I started my first gallery, the Ricco /Johnson Gallery, via the world of American Folk Art. My gallery business partner Elizabeth Johnson and I were collecting unique, anonymous work that was not part of the mainstream collecting in this field. That first gallery then evolved into the Ricco/Maresca Gallery (which remains very active to this day with Frank Maresca).
Right about then I started to meet a couple of people in this area that were discovering American Outsiders, not necessarily psychiatric patients, like Henry Darger and Martin Ramirez, but other rather remarkable discoveries like Bill Traylor, Sam Doyle and William Hawkins, etc. whose work, at the time was just appearing on the scene.
The pivotal personal moment for me as dealer was meeting and spending time with William Hawkins. An artist who knew him in Columbus Ohio, where he lived, brought slides of his work to me. I was deeply moved by what I saw in his work. As a painter myself I felt an immediate connection with Hawkins’ obvious love of paint it self, and the act of painting. Within the week, I traveled to Columbus to meet him and soon after we started representing him and his work in a formal way.
Through connections with other gallerists like Phyllis Kind, who were more into and had experience in the European side of Outsider work, I began to realize this whole phenomenon was much larger and had been around and recognized much earlier then the American artists. In time, we also started to, and continue to, represent artists from across world.
Some of Roger’s collection - centre is Shinya Fujii
2. When did you become a collector of this art?
I would never classify myself as a collector - the Gallery itself was satisfying my need for hanging out with good stuff! I would see myself as an archeologist and not so much a collector.
When I was representing William Hawkins I would always purchase one or two pieces for myself. This was the same for all the artists we were representing. But the criteria in choosing art for my self has always been that a piece has to always shift the way I see the world. The element of pure shock (and I say this as an artist myself not as a collector) at seeing something so unexpected that I had to take that piece home and savor and learn from it, ideally forever.
When I saw the art being produced particularly by people from the American south, it was for me like finding the Atlantis of the art world. Frank and I did many visits and research with some of the artists who were still living at the time. I always took photos (and sometimes videos). All of this led to publications with major publishing houses, which, as it turned out, helped to bring a ton of awareness to the nascent field.
We produced the first book on the art of Bill Traylor in collaboration and with an interview with Charles Shannon, who found and championed the artist and the artist’s body of work. That interview became the first person history of Shannon’s meeting and experience with Traylor. These artists played a role in the significant exhibition titled ‘Black Folk Art in America’ at the Corcoran Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. This exhibit was historic and turned everyone on to this field.
But as a “collector” and a dealer in the process of finding and representing new artists, self-taught or contemporary, I always acquired pieces for myself that just made me shiver.
Some of Roger’s collection - Leopold Strobl
3. Can you tell us a bit about your background and about your role at Ricco/Maresca in New York?
In 1979 the Gallery was trading as Ricco/ Johnson, but I was even then collaborating with Frank Maresca, as we had so much in common and had done business in the field prior.
Elizabeth Johnson, who recently passed, was part of the Johnson and Johnson Drug Company and when we discovered our mutual interest in the field of American Folk art she financed our gallery in Soho. That gallery was an immediate hit and really helped explode the field into people’s awareness. We closed that galley after three years though, as she had other interests and the gallery became a little too much for her.
Frank and I were cementing our working relationship during this time. The Gallery changed its name to Ricco/Maresca in around 1982.
Frank and I were both working photographers, and independent artists ourselves to a large degree, so both of us had an eye to do graphic design that led to our books that became classics in this field. We wanted to share great art that no one else was looking at.
In the contemporary art world the artists come in and you represent them and give them half the money from the sale, but in those days there were a lot of vultures out there picking through the self-taught art in the American south and not compensating the artist properly. In our case, the first living artist we represented was William Hawkins, and he and any of the other self taught artists that we represented were represented in the standard way.
My exposure to people like Phyllis Kind (and her European Outsider interests) and the work of American Outsiders, showed us new things and put us onto new paths.
The metal objects on the wall are sculptures by Hawkins Bolden. The other objects around it are found objects that I have collected over the years that I like because of their design
4. What is it that draws your eye away from contemporary art to outsider/folk art? Or do you collect both?
My eye is not drawn away, as I always enjoyed our dealings and representation of contemporary artists. I love contemporary art and we now represent a range of contemporary artists, so there is crossover now. But what did draw me into specializing in the Outsider Field was that I had never before seen anything quite as real as this self-taught work.
In contemporary art at that time everything I was seeing was either by already famous people, the big boys, or, to my eye, repetitive self-conscious work and things coming out of the schools. The Outsider work I was seeing was so mind blasting in its resolve - when I would see it I would think ‘this is complete and this is fantastic - what universe did it come from?’
Also, I loved the opportunity to meet living artists. Going back to the archeology thing and meeting people like Thornton Dial, Howard Finster, David Butler and William Hawkins etc. - these encounters gave me an opportunity to become engaged with the artist’s creativity. There was nothing like this coming out of the contemporary art world at that time. I had the opportunity to work with living artists and through this I got a little bit of a clue that creativity can emerge from anywhere and this is often the theme of my talks that I give on the field in general, but especially on the aspect of art and its healing power.
I ask myself, how does their creativity arise, what if someone devotes themselves to their art and has no career in mind like contemporary artist always do?
What I realized was that most of these people we started to discover and represent had neighbors living near them who the artists enjoyed showing their handy work to. They enjoyed the attention and that attention in the beginning was not really part of the outside world, they were just doing their art because they wanted to.
Someone might say that they had an agenda like with Jesus telling them to make art, but these, I felt, were excuses, because I believe they would have done it anyway. These people wouldn’t know where to go for a career, and wouldn’t know it was art anyway. I felt this was raw creativity that I had access to and it would teach me something about the human mind. That went to a deeper level because with the world of mental illness and autism too, I felt I had an access that I needed in my life to raw creativity.
Left is William Hawkins and right is Marcos Bontempo
5. Would you say you had a favorite artist or piece of work within your collection? And why?
I have a few prejudiced favorites. Right now I own a few personal William Hawkins works and I love the ‘Last Supper #4’.
But my favorite artist right now is Leopold Strobl from the Gugging facility in Austria. He constantly mystifies me with where his head is at and graphically his work always surprises me. I love it as I respond to him as a painter myself. I am collecting him mostly right now. I am also very fond of the Japanese artist, Shinya Fujii, I acquired an wonderful piece from you at the Paris Outsider Fair a few years go. I believe collectors should consider his work seriously.
6. Is there an exhibition in this field of art that you have felt has been particularly important? And why?
The ‘Black Folk Art in America’ exhibition. It was amazing in terms of it jump-starting the field, as well as the recognition it got was really great. It was the a huge event for not only did it get a lot of visitors, Newsweek Magazine devoted a cover and story to the show and art critics were raving about it. I even remember William De Kooning was still alive at the time, but very old, and he still drove with a colleague to Washington DC as he had also heard great things about it. When he saw Bill Traylor’s work he totally flipped out. Everyone was like ‘wait a minute, what just happened’ – it was like an alien, it appeared out of nowhere, and changed the field here in the US initially and of course soon it became a world wide phenomenon.
I should also mention the Outsider Art Fair – we were founding participants of the fair. Sanford Smith, who founded the fair, took us out one morning to tell us about his idea to have an art fair just for this new field. By this time the Black Folk Art show had happened and interest in the work was exploding.
Sanford suggested that we be the first to come onto his idea for an Outsider Art Fair. I was skeptical to begin with, for I asked, how does one separate out the good from inferior pictures and then say they are part of this field? We resisted joining the fair, but it soon became obvious that we had to take part. The fair was an immediate hit and there were lines around the block at that time to get in. People started to recognize the field.
Another thing that started to occur in the early days of the Outsider Art Fair, and being a gallery championing this work, was that there was a rush of people who fancied themselves artists who flowed into the gallery insisting they were outsider artists. (I still don’t know what that is, but……) Outsider had become trendy, but luckily over time the real and good stuff always rose to the top, so that’s where we are now, I hope.
Collector as well as ‘art world’ awareness exploded. Critics wrote and raved and compared the best of it to art history and contemporary art. All that attention, of course, also changed the market place. The show quickly changed the economics of the field a $300 Bill Traylor became a $1200 Bill Traylor and soon it became an $8000 piece instead. And look where it is now!
William Hawkins, Last Supper #4
7. When did you step down from Ricco/Maresca Gallery and are you still linked with it in any role/capacity? Can you tell us what you do now instead?
I am still on the masthead, but around two years ago I retired. I am co-founder and partner emeritus I guess so I am still involved to a degree and because of my speaking career; I still go around talking by invitation to universities and non- profits about the gallery, the art and the artists. I spoke and discussed the world of American Outsider artists last year at the Gugging Museum in Vienna.
Over time I became much less interested in the commercial end of the business. I was really interested in finding the artists and finding out about their lives and minds. I also really loved when someone new discovered for themselves this great work though the gallery shows and the books we did.
Also it just seemed the right time to go. I live upstate New York, two hours north of New York City, so I now have a piece of land here creating pollinating fields and watching the seasons. I also work on and exhibit my own photography.
The change in my feelings about art in my life (not just Outsider art but contemporary art too) is that it started to look like a movie playing itself over and over. So my identity with art became less important for me. However the more I travel and see the “outsider” work that is still emerging internationally I am happy to say my spirit is once again activated by the terrific things I am seeing.
8. Is there anything else that you would like to add?
I am back to doing more of my own work now - https://rogerriccophotography.com/ With most of it I want it to appeal to the designer world, not so much the art world. I am not trying to change the world with my photography, but do more of the Jasper Johns idea – to take something and do something to it. I am like hey a plant is growing in my backyard and it looks interesting so I bring it into the studio and I set up a stage in the studio. In the studio things happen. To me, no flower or a stone is ever mundane.
It wasn’t like I substituted the Gallery for my own work as my work always has been going on alongside it. Living in nature opened up the doors of time for me, watching the days and the scenery change and move.
I can barely stand going into New York City anymore. Given the fact I lived there a very long time and have seen the neighborhoods change from unique pockets of people and culture to never ending steel and glass. I wonder if any one really lives there anymore. I mean, lives, not just do. Nowadays I go into the city for openings at the Gallery and love seeing my artist and client friends once in a while, but it is not right for me to be there in big doses now.
For me the Gallery in part replaced any of my personal need to accumulate a lot of art. I have a Buddhist background, so my mindset is about not having loads of things around. The Gallery was satisfying me wanting to be involved in this field. As I said earlier I am not a collector but an archeologist.
I can’t wait for the next surprise!