Ricky Clifton: Design Minotaur – Part Man, Part Myth
By Christopher Daish
Published December 2012
Published December 2012
Ricky Clifton: Design Minotaur - Part Man, Part Myth
In the confines of a recent reflective train upstate to Albany, I found myself texting my former employer artist/designer Ricky Clifton. He had just returned from his friend Rachel Feinstein’s opening at the Gagosian in Rome, en route to Milan and Barcelona. “Did you see the ruin, the castle on the small island?” he inquired referring to Bannerman Castle that I had indeed just passed. It took me back to the days spent as Ricky’s assistant; painting the walls of the Interview Magazine office SoHo in Andy’s blue, moving pieces within the cryptic masterpiece that was to become home for supermodel Agyness Deyn, drinking watermelon martinis whilst re-arranging Basquiats at Glenn O’Brien’s apartment, to name a few. Witness to the quiet genius of Clifton, attempting to climb into the landscape of his mind, I encountered a man from another era.
Clifton came from modest stock in Fort Worth, Texas; his father worked at Taco Bell and mother was an executive secretary. In the seventies, he met idol and soon to be friend Andy Warhol, who told him that it was a good time to move to New York. Clifton listened and landed a job in NYC with Jean-Paul Goude at Esquire, costuming celebs’ pets as other celebs for television. He dressed Warhol’s two dachshunds: Amos as the pope and Archie as Jacque Cousteau. Goude left Esquire and the series never aired but Clifton had found his niche amongst the artist elite. Clifton views Warhol as, “the statue of liberty of New York, who took onboard the outsiders, and will never be replaced.” When he called The Factory, Andy always picked up the phone.
Clifton’s pièce de résistance – the Williamsburg loft of British supermodel Agyness Deyn comes to mind when attempting to grapple with his genius. The 3,000 sq. ft. corner loft is an esoteric journey through the upper limits of design possibility and was featured on the cover of the April 2010 edition of World of Interiors. Deyn’s triumph paved the way for the realization of the lofty ambitions of artist super couple Rachel Feinstein and John Currin’s SoHo loft (featured in WOI December 2010). Clifton’s designs draw upon the Early Modern Period, the Aesthetic Movement that gained prominence in 19th Century Europe. He holds British designers William Morris (1834-96) and Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) in great esteem. In 1977, Clifton studied design in Kyoto, Japan focusing on tea ceremony, noh, kendo, and calligraphy, traits that permeate his work. Integral to his vision are the works of iconic American decorator Billy Baldwin, Italian interior architect Renzo Mongiardino, Italian designer Piero Fornasetti, and American artist Cy Twombly.
Currently, Clifton is decorating a co-op at the Dakota Building (72nd Street and Central Park West) for private clients; a dream job not only because of his love for Renaissance English Victorian settings, but his like-minded clients and their need for a bar in every room. Jokingly they vow to start a new religion, sort of like Mormonism focused on the girl called “intellectual design.” Between daily jaunts to the Upper West Side, Clifton does flowers for a select clientele including British actress/artist Jemima Kirke. In the seventies, Clifton worked for famous NYC florist Toni Dipace who was discovered by designer Roy Halston and fashion illustrator Joe Eula whilst selling zinnias out of clamshells in Long Island and was responsible for the shift away from arrangements to plants. One Christmas, Clifton delivered a tree to the Dakota Building to Lauren Bacall the wife of the late Humphrey Bogart. When he asked where to put it she replied, “I don’t give a fuck where you put the God Damn thing cause I think Christmas is the most depressing day of the year,” as it was Bogie’s birthday.
A jack-of-all-trades, Clifton procures art and antiques from a variety of auctions and markets worldwide for a broad client base. Entrenched in a seemingly endless whir of design and art, Clifton pauses for a brief moment to revisit his love for opera. In the eighties, Clifton drove a cab in NYC and hoarded opera records, a collection he eventually gave away to artist friend Phillip Taaffe. Clifton fondly recalls when he found a Leontyne Price record discarded on a street corner in Tribeca. Several years later one cold December night, he picked up Price in his cab, whilst listening to his regular Friday night opera broadcast. Serendipitously, Kurt Herbert Adler’s Il Trovatore featuring Price came on. As Clifton approached her Tribeca apartment, Price instructed the cab driver to, “drive around the block, there is a nine minute ovation coming up.” Clifton looped the block and Price asked him to wait while she fetched something from her apartment. When she returned, Clifton rolled down the window and she handed him her latest record and exclaimed, “see I told you it was nine minutes.”
At the conclusion of our lunch meeting at Clifton’s “local deli” Casa Mono (52 Irving Place, NY), the conversation shifted to politics and his disdain for anything Republican. On parting, he gave me his best Mitt Romney trot impersonation and disappeared back into his abstract world.
