Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/32301
The One and Only Ricky Clifton is as elusive as he is talented. Alexandra Szucs Cunningham, Design Miami/’s director of exhibitions, tracked down the artist, designer and one-time taxi driver to discuss his many lives and his current obsessions. PORTRAIT BY BEN RITTER Ricky Clifton invites recognition. I spot his small colorful cap, Where’s Waldo- style, all over the world. Whether in a sea of dinner guests in New York, on pri- vate docks in Miami, late-night on the dance floor in Basel, on crowded flights between Paris and Milan, or exhibition openings in London, Clifton is in the middle of the action. A painter, ceramicist, designer, interior architect and skilled conversation- alist, Clifton has a style that privileges discord over symmetry. So it’s no sur- prise that as New Yorkers are looking West for a new interior language, Clifton is retranslating contemporary décor, displaying an irreverent levity through a layered mix of periods and styles. His recent work for clients such as Judy Hudson, Philip Glass, John Currin and Agyness Deyn present a mystical brico- lage of Fornasetti textiles, clusters of multicolored quartz, delicate drawings, ceramic terrines and modern and Art Deco masterpieces personally excavated by Clifton from international galleries, flea markets and auctions. On an early New York morning, after a trip to the lumberyard and a pit- stop for Japanese-drip coffee, I finally succeeded in getting Clifton to stay in one place: the roof deck of Deyn’s Williamsburg apartment. ASC: You were born in Fort Worth, Texas. When did you move to New York? RC: I moved to New York in 1975, ‘cause I’m an artist. ASC: What was New York like for you in the ‘70s? RC: It was like Morocco or something. It was totally different. Giuliani subur- banized New York. I was going to run for mayor at some point against Giuliani, and my platform was going to be that I was going to bring back crime to New York City. At some point, the bohemian spirit was removed. After I moved to the city I met this guy David Kidd who had an art seminar in the summer in Japan. There was a Shinto sect outside of Kyoto that was persecuted because they were anti-war. The artists in the area came together to help the sect after the army came in and destroyed everything. They wanted to give back to the artists community so they started an international arts seminar. ASC: The school was focused on cultural preservation? RC: Yeah. Every day we studied Kindo and Noh drama and the tea ceremony and calligraphy. And we studied other things too but those were our four basic classes. We took trips. It was really great. Then I came back to New York and had a framing business for about 10 years. Mostly for artists. I started making frames because I didn’t like shadow box frames and that’s all anybody was using. My work was a reaction to that. ASC: Where did that lead you? RC: To driving a cab! I only drove at night and picked up tons of celebrities. One time I was going by Elaine’s. Andy Warhol was there, who I knew before I moved to New York. (I’m on page 3 of the Warhol diary, having been here since 1975.) I stopped to talk to him, and he said to wait and he would put a bunch of famous people in my car, so Armani and Carolina Herrera and some other 52 CULTURED people came out and I’d just been to Italy for the first time and I told Armani all about my trip to Italy and how great it was. How I loved Italy and wouldn’t mind living there and all this stuff. I told this to an Italian friend of mine who knows Armani and she said oh really? Oh really? What did he say? And I said I don’t remember, and she said of course you don’t remember because he doesn’t speak a word of English. ASC: When did you start designing interiors? RC: When I was a kid in Texas. I did my apartment with flea market furniture and sarapes. ASC: How would you describe the apartment? RC: Uh, Colorful? Very colorful (laughter). And plants. I had ficus trees. It was a look back in the early ‘70s. ASC: Then you started working with individual clients in the ‘90s? RC: In the ‘90s Judy Hudson was one of my first clients. And Philip Glass. He got Virgil Thomson’s apartment in the Chelsea Hotel and we started doing a whole aesthetic movement with prints. I did one of Judy’s kids’ rooms. I wall- papered the whole room. Through my artwork, I did a lot of printing and col- lected wood-block prints and used them to print my own wallpaper. That’s sort of how I got into it. It’s all art as far as I’m concerned. ASC: How much do you read the person who’s going to live in the space? RC: I never do the same thing twice. I don’t have a look. Every client is differ- ent. Every job is different. I always try to take people’s ideas and then sort of have fun with them. Even corrupt some of them. ASC: I love it! RC: When I first started with Agyness, I did the architectural drawings. I showed her a Madeleine Castaing tape that she watched and she freaked out and said she really liked that whole thing. This was the intro. I used a lot of Fornasetti and early 19th-century modern furniture. ASC: Do you favor a specific period of design history? RC: The middle of the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution, when the aristocracy began to crumble and modernism started. The style was more so- phisticated, not obsessed with luxury. I like Christopher Dresser and William Morris. William Morris dealt with the Industrial Revolution as an opportunity to preserve antiquities and Dresser used the Industrial revolution to make pro- gressive designs, more sophisticated and worldly designs. I like different periods all mixed together—like Disco Granny. John Currin makes fun of me about that. He tends to be very masculine and he says that I’ll mirror that but then stick in something granny just for fun. ASC: For example? RC: Like how Carlo Mollino used to put little doilies on his furniture. ASC: You create a sense of tension? RC: At one point, I worked for the couturier Charles James. He taught me that every great design should have some little point of ridicule. I still apply this principle to all of my work.