Rick Prol
A definitive artist among the 80’s East Village gallery scene, Rick Prol discusses human folly, the color black and making the most of opportunities.
NOTICE: The artist Interview series is now being published bi-weekly
Rick Prol is a New York-based artist who received a B.F.A. from the Cooper Union in 1980. From 1982 onward, he began showing his exuberant works throughout New York City galleries including a solo exhibition at Hal Bromm Gallery in 1984. His cartoonish figures in dystopian urban scenes are simultaneously humorous and horrific. Boldly painted in vibrant colors, his works pinpoint human follies and suffering in an absurd and uniquely stylized way. Prol’s work is in many private and public collections including the Smithsonian Libraries Collection; the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; the Contemporary Museum of Art, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, NYC and the Guggenheim Museum, among others. Moreover, Prol’s work has been exhibited at Leeahn Gallery in South Korea; Kaj Forsblom Gallery in Finland; and The Dorian Grey Gallery, and Hal Bromm Gallery, both in Tribeca, New York City.
Mepaintsme: I first came across your work around 1986 through an ad I saw in Art News, I think. I was heavily into Max Beckmann at the time, and your work, with its powerful symbolism and use of black, immediately struck a chord. I’ve always traced a lineage in your work to the German Expressionists — artists like Kirchner and Otto Müller. Do you feel a relation to this particular period of art history, and if so, why?
Rick Prol: One of my earliest influences in painting was Emil Nolde. My parents had a beautiful big book of his works and I would make copies of his paintings at a very young age. I still have a couple of them. After Goya, Picasso, Munch, Van Gogh, Kokoschka, Matthias Grunewald to name a few earliest influences, the German Expressionists have been some of my biggest inspirations. Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, Louis Corinth, Max Pechstein et-al. I feel a very deep connection with them and always have.
But there are other important influences that I had from a very early age such as Gustav Dore, Charles Addams, Dr. Seuss, and a photo book of decaying plantations titled Ghosts Along The Mississippi.
MPM: Sure, I can see these influences coming through in the paintings. But I also got the sense that they were very much reflective of a time and place. In my initial viewing of your paintings, they felt symbolic of a certain level of destitution and despair that existed in New York in the early 80’s. It’s interesting to me, because as the city has changed over the last 40 years and money and gentrification have proliferated, your imagery has maintained that same dark edge and sense of decay. It's making me reconsider that first interpretation! Can you talk a bit about your personal iconography, and provide some insight into this dark symbolism you’ve used throughout your career?
RP: This is not the easiest of subjects to talk about for me. I know where my imagery comes from. Should I tell? Should I reveal the source, the reasons, the symbolism, the iconography and what it means? Isn't it better to leave that for others to figure out and interpret for themselves what the work signifies, what it might mean and is about? If you must know, in a very basic way, it is about Trauma. I won't go into any of the details about the traumatic events but suffice it to say that is what it entails, and a lot more. I had a very long apprenticeship before I found my voice, as it were. That was the last element to come into play. My own voice, with my own language. The imagery in many ways was stored up inside of me but I had no way of depicting it, I had no access to the subjects. Once I did, the work evolved almost fully formed and simply spilled out, unfiltered. A lot of it is very surprising and even shocking to me let alone to the audience. I think it can stay that way. The work is both of a highly personal nature and yet very much about social conditions, about life, the human condition and human folly.
MPM: I’ve gotten the impression that your generation had a ton of antagonism towards the conceptual/minimal/performance arts dominance in the 70’s that made the neo-expressionist zeitgeist seem inevitable. When you graduated from Cooper Union in 1980 were these still the predominant notions of ‘serious’ art? What was the general response to your work after graduating? Was there still pushback from galleries?
RP: I had no antagonism towards minimalism or performance art per se. I understood its significance and historical relevance, fully. I liked, appreciated and loved some of the work by various artists of the 70s. To name a few Joseph Beuys, Sol Lewitt, Brice Marden, Robert Smithson, Robert Ryman, Richard Long, Richard Serra, Agnes Martin, Vito Acconci, Nam June Paik, Janis Kounellis, and the Arte Povera Movement out of Italy. All of this work and the artists that made it were vital and something to react to, and against as I did, but not because I felt negatively about them. Where I got to evolved out of my reaction to these artists that I could not add anything more to in effect. I had to add something to what they did that was my own. For me it was, yes, the figurative element and it came on with a vengeance. Philip Guston and some others had helped show the way.
As for the reception of my work I was lucky in the timing, yes. There was also some pushback from certain dealers, collectors, critics and other artists in how my work was viewed but the recaption was also very positive and things happened very quickly. I started selling and living off my work because there were enough that got it. I got very favourable write-ups and mentions in the art periodicals of that time by Donald Kuspit, Holland Cotter, Robert Pincus-Witten, and many others. Like I said, some didn't get it at all, however — but enough did.
MPM: You've been painting the figure throughout your career, and still do, though I thought your recent series Empty City was incredibly powerful work. Were these paintings directly speaking to the pandemic? Can you talk a bit about what led to these works?
RP: The "Empty City" works were specifically about the covid pandemic and what the city was like and how I felt at the time. They are Bleak in many ways but not totally. I felt I needed to make some kind of a record of that time in a way. All of that is understood as to what it was about after the fact, after the work is done, not while it is happening. I can look back over any series and see it more clearly later on and sometimes I have no idea what it was I was doing except that it has to have a consistent level of technical quality.
MPM: Regardless of subject the consistent thread throughout most of your work is your use of black. Why were you drawn to using black? Was it strictly formal or was there something else behind it?
RP: Black is my most important colour. The Absence of Colour. I have always been extremely impressed with how Picasso used black in a certain phase of the development of Cubism. The Impressionists didn't use it, or very little, and I think that’s why it has gotten some kind of bad wrap. Goya certainly used it. I like the idea that one can be known for using certain things like certain colours and certain techniques.
MPM: I also noticed a recent series of gouaches depicting the same type of empty, dilapidated houses titled Dominican Republic. Were these based on actual visits to the Dominican Republic?
RP: I have been going to the Dominican Republic for a number of years now, and I made a large series of works that relate to those trips there. To me, they are about isolation and solitude in an idyllic setting. The beauty of nature, and also the destructiveness of humans.
MPM: Having had your feet in both the pre-internet art world and one that’s more or less been dominated by social media, what’s your opinion about this evolution?
RP: Social media has of course changed everything in terms of perception and human interactions for better or worse. I do have a nostalgia for pre-internet, pre-cell phones, pre-computers. One always uses what is readily available in the most constructive ways possible and it's no different with social media.
MPM: Looking at your career, what are some (or one) of the most important things you’ve learned that have sustained you as an artist? Would you have any helpful advice to a young Rick Prol just starting out?
RP: One learns things often the hard way and I have had my share. I had zero background in terms of the business and politics of the art world, even though I graduated from Cooper Union College in 1980. Nothing really prepares you for it. I was fortunate in the timing of my works being seen and I was also somewhat disillusioned initially about aspects of the art biz, the art scene, the other players in it. But in the end, had no problem adjusting my preconceived notions and accepted the reality of the situation that one must navigate. I made plenty of "mistakes" regardless.
As to my advice to artists starting out it would be to make the most of the opportunities you are presented with, that you are given. They may only come around once or for a short time, so don't waste them or take it for granted. Don't bite the hand that feeds you either. Realize you do not have that much power in the art world, though you may think you do.
MPM: I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. It was a real pleasure. Do you have any shows or projects you’d like to mention coming up?
RP: No solo shows to announce at this time. Working on it.
Rick Prol will be in the forthcoming exhibition Slight of Hand at Mepaintsme Gallery, from November 7 - December 24, 2024.
Rick Prol is represented by Hal Bromm in Tribeca, NYC, Leeahn Gallery in Seoul and Daegu, South Korea
NOTICE: This Interview series is now being published bi-weekly
Instagram: @rickprol