VIDEO: 5 Artists on Richard Prince

Meet Arthur Jafa, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, Collier Schorr and Joachim Koester, who all relate to and are inspired by the work of great American artist Richard Prince.

“He is clearly the blackest white artist I know.” To American artist Arthur Jafa, Prince legitimised an artistic practice very close to his own – the collection and rearranging of images: “His work anticipates, maybe parallels hip-hop, sampling, all this kind of stuff. I can’t think of another artist whose work is so immersed in a field of endeavour that I would say is so parallel to black conceptual preoccupations.”

“Well, he was like a father figure to me,” American photographer Collier Schorr adds, who met Richard Prince as early as 1983. “He was bigger than life. I think he is an artist’s artist because even if you don’t know him, you feel like he is trying to explain something.”

Los Angeles icon Ed Ruscha became aware of Richard Prince’s work in the late 1970s and has followed him since: “He is like a scavenger for all of us, and that was my first impression of him and his work. He is bringing us something that we ignored for so long. When I think of Richard Prince, I think that guy is on a boat of his own design, and he is way out there to see.”

Danish artist and photographer Joachim Koester shares Ruscha’s perspective: “Richard Prince senses that there is something more here. That there is something that is concealed within images. That something can be cleaned from them if you photograph them again and present them out of context. I don’t think that Richard Prince is concealing anything. But he is very attracted to things that seem to conceal something.”

Finally, New York-based artist Taryn Simon is impressed by Prince’s capability to reposition and elevate things – and the effect his artworks have on the audience: “It’s almost like a boomerang. These things are thrown out to the world, and he sends them flying back in our face.”

This anthology of five distinct contemporary artists was conceived in connection with the exhibition Richard Prince: Same Man at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. The show was opened in November 2022 and was part of the Louisiana Museum’s series On Paper.

Ed Ruscha was interviewed by Anders Kold in his studio in Los Angeles in July 2022,
Collier Schorr, Taryn Simon, Arthur Jafa and Joachim Koester were interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at different locations in New York, Paris and Copenhagen. All interviews were recorded between June and October 2022. Camera: Sean Hanley (New York), Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan (Paris, Copenhagen), Travis LaBella (Los Angeles), Edited by: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan, Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner, © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2022. Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, C.L. Davids Fond og Samling, and Fritz Hansen