PHOTO:Richard Prince-New Portraits

Mining images from advertising, social media, and entertainment since the late 1970s, Richard Prince has redefined concepts of authorship, ownership, and aura. Applying his understanding of the complex issues surrounding representation in the context of contemporary art, he has developed a unique signature, one filled with echos of other images, yet unquestionably his own.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Archive

A collector and perceptive chronicler of American subcultures and vernaculars and their role in the construction of American identity, Richard Prince has probed the depths of racism, sexism, and psychosis in mainstream humor; the mythical status of cowboys, bikers, customized cars, and celebrities; and most recently, the push–pull allure of pulp fiction and soft porn, producing such unlikely icons as the highly coveted “Nurse” series. Richard Prince presents a series of “New Portraits” at Gagosian Gallery in New York. Born in 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone, then a United States territory, Richard Prince moved to a suburb of Boston in 1954. In 1973, after applying to the San Francisco Art Institute without success, he moved to New York, where he became familiar with Conceptual art. While working in the Time-Life Building as a preparer of magazine clippings, he realized the possibilities of using advertising imagery, as an element in his art. Early works such as “Untitled (Cigarettes)” (1978–79) and “Untitled (three women looking in the same direction)” (1980) consist of found advertising images, rephotographed and juxtaposed with one another by the artist. The deliberately artificial look of the photographs linked Prince to contemporaries such as Cindy Sherman and Jack Goldstein, who were also using photography to blur the line between reality and artifice. Prince’s decontextualization of found photographs and interest in consumer culture also situated him alongside emerging appropriation artists, including Barbara Kruger and Sherrie Levine. Prince was involved in the downtown New Wave scene at this time; he played in bands and was a regular at the Mudd Club and other rock venues. During the early 1980s, Prince developed a process that resulted in grids of juxtaposed images, which he referred to as “gangs”. In works such as “Entertainers” (1982–83), he joined together multiple 35 mm slides of images from advertisements and magazines to form one larger negative, from which the final print was made. Each “gang” focused on a particular pop-culture motif of desire, including car hoods, bikers, pornography, cowboys, and sunsets. He also began taking his own photographs. For the series “Girlfriends” (1992), Prince photographed women who had appeared in biker magazines, re-creating their magazine images. In the late 1980s, Prince began painting texts of jokes against abstract, often monochromatic backgrounds, as in “The Wrong Joke” (1989). He also started painting directly onto found materials such as tires and car hoods, creating hybrids of painting and sculpture, including “Untitled (Hoods)” (1989). In the mid-’90s, he photographed around his home in upstate New York, concentrating on mundane suburban details. His series “Nurses” (2002–06) juxtaposes the popular icon of ’50s and ’60s pulp-fiction paperbacks with elusive text cloistered within menacing abstract backgrounds. On his blog, and reprinted in Love magazine, Richard Prince has published an essay about the genesis of “New Portraits” and how he discovered technology, and the way in which it has informed, and become a part of, his work. “I asked my daughter about Tumblr. Are those your photos? Where did you get that one? Did you need permission? How did you get that kind of crop? “You can delete them? Really? What about these ‘followers’. Who are they? Are they people you know? What if you don’t want to share? How many of your friends have Tumblrs?” Later, he writes: “This past spring, and half the summer, the iPhone became my studio. I signed up for Instagram. I pushed things aside. I made room. It was easy. I ignored Tumblr, and Facebook had never interested me. But Instagram…” As with previous appropriated Prince works, the Instagram prints draw attention to the intersection of art and copyright infringement; Prince has been challenged in courts but has so far won or settled his cases. Some of the unwilling subjects of his art, notably members of SuicideGirls, have started selling their own derivative works based on Prince derivative works of their original works.

Info: Gagosian Gallery, 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, Duration: 6/2-21/3/20, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com