Julie L. Belcove interviewed Pace Prints president Dick Solomon for her feature in Introspective Magazine, an editorial venture from 1stDibs. In "Richard Solomon is the King of Prints," Solomon discusses how he got his start in the print business and his advice on collecting art saying, “The most important thing in buying a work of art is that you’re going to like it in four or five years, so it doesn’t give you all that it’s got in your first look.”
Solomon recalls the 1960 stroll in Boston where he discovered the new contemporary art space Pace Gallery and met Arne Glimcher for the first time. “I bought the first thing he ever sold as an art dealer,” says Solomon. Eight years later, the two partnered on the publishing offshoot, which has collaborated with over 150 artists to date.
The interview chronicles Solomon's time at Harvard, Stop & Shop (his mother’s family’s business), Clairol and finally Pace Editions. Solomon credits the Pace Prints staff with some of the milestone business decisions he has made, from becoming a fully operational printshop with the the addition of master printer Joe Wilfer in the mid-1970s to the opening of a Chelsea gallery with a push from then-director Jacob Lewis.
While he is "loath to rank" the prints Pace Prints has produced, he does discuss his sentimental favorite from his personal collection: a fingerprint portrait by Chuck Close depicting a 40-year-old Solomon. At the time, "Solomon’s mother urged him to buy it. 'I said, 'You know, Mom, I really don’t like it. It makes me look much too old.'" but after some time his feelings have changed. “Forty years later,” Solomon notes of the portrait, “I look amazingly good.”
