Richard Prince
Relevancy:
I am interested in Prince’s ability to rephotograph work. He isn’t changing the work physically so much but rather changing the context of how the work is viewed creating a new concept and viewpoint for his viewers. Working with advertising and societal themes in America I have found many similarities in our work. Prince also has some of the highest price photographs ever sold. I am curious as to how he created such value to his work as a collector’s item.
About:
Richard Prince (born 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone) is an American painter and photographer. Prince began creating appropriation photographs in 1975. His image, Untitled (Cowboy), a "rephotograph" taken originally by Sam Abell and appropriated from a cigarette advertisement, was the first "rephotograph" to raise more than $1 million at auction when it was sold at Christie's New York in 2005.
Starting in 1977, Prince photographed four photographs which previously appeared in the New York Times. This process of re-photographing continued into 1983, when his work Spiritual America featured Garry Gross's photo of Brooke Shields at the age of ten, standing in a bathtub, as an allusion to precocious sexuality and to the Alfred Stieglitz photograph by the same name. His Jokes series (beginning 1986) concerns the sexual fantasies and sexual frustrations of middle-class America, using stand-up comedy and burlesque humor.
After living in New York City for 25 years, Prince moved to upstate New York. His mini-museum, Second House, purchased by the Guggenheim Museum, was struck by lightning and burned down shortly after the museum purchased the House (which Richard had created for himself), having only stood for six years, from 2001 to 2007.[1] Prince now lives and works in New York City.
“Richard Prince.” Wikipedia. Feb. 2011 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Prince>
Interviews / Quotes:
“That's where you started photographing photographs.” - Eva Prinz
“I got a job in the tearsheets department, ripping up magazines like People, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and Time, and delivering the editorial pages to the appropriate departments. At the end of the day, I was left with the advertising pages. I started looking at the ads very carefully. These images of happy couples were supposed to represent something, but they didn't really mean anything to me. So I began to use a camera to make fake photographs of the ads.” – Richard Prince
“Much of your work is inspired by magazines.” - Eva Prinz
“Yeah. I used to read a lot of niche lifestyle magazines. For my Girlfriend series in 1999, I looked at American biker magazines like Easy Rider and Iron Horse. I would also pick up Muscle Car, Car and Driver, and Mustang to look at the advertisements when I was working on my Hoods series in 2003.” – Richard Prince
Prinz, Eva. “Richard Prince, 2005” Index Magazine. Feb 2011. <http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/richard_prince.shtml>
“The jokes were a mistake. The jokes were wrong… It occurred to me that if I was to call them “jokes” then I would need to get rid of the illustration and concentrate on the punch line. So that’s what I did. I started to think about the ‘text’ underneath the cartoon. I started to hand-write the words that were typed below the cartoon. They weren’t funny or ‘telling’ when separated from their original source. I bought some “joke” magazines and found the “Psychiatrist’s joke the first day of looking (I went to a psychiatrist, I told him everything. And now he’s doing my act). That’s the way it went.
At first I didn’t really understand the joke but I thought it had something to do with ‘substitution’. It was perfect. Abstract. And by hand/writing it out on a small piece of paper with a pen was a pretty good way of “making it again”. It didn’t cost anything to do it and it didn’t really look like anything – at least anything that I could think of. “ – Richard Prince
“What were the initial responses?” – Brian Appel
“ When I showed people that this is what my art looked like they reacted with disbelief. “I don’t believe you” was their ‘take’. Great I figured. I had truly made it ‘wrong’. The hand-written jokes, which were introduced in 1986 I think, were some of the best work that has ever been done in the history of art. The horn is blowing? I don’t think so.” – Richard Prince
Appel, Brian. “Richard Prince Interview” Rove TV. Feb 2011. <http://www.rovetv.net/pr-interview.html>
Images:
Artist Interview:
Artist Website:
None
Artist Representation:
Posts
Post a Comment