Richard Prince
Beki Senior asks why the ‘Father of Appropriation’ had work removed from the Tate.
“They say I shot a man named Lee… and took his wife to Italy. She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me… I can’t help it if I’m lucky…”
Possibly not the most orthodox mode of correspondence, however, the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s Idiot Wind only begins to scratch the surface of the cryptic nuances that shaped an equally unorthodox interview with appropriation artist, Richard Prince.
Renowned for his somewhat cannibalistic coveting of advertised images, his given title ‘Father of Appropriation Art’ (interpreted by Prince through an equally musical reference as “sounding like the Tombstone Blues”) was facilitated by a move to New York in 1977. Integrated into an art scene bathing in the bright light of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, Prince explains his reasons for moving to New York: “I wanted to be part of a soap opera. I wanted to go to the ballet. I wanted to sleep all day. I wanted to live in a neighborhood that had three or four bars on the block. I wanted to talk to other artists.”
The slightly more conventional working environment afforded by a job in the tear-sheets department at Time-Life in New York, described by Prince as “like living in a giant novel”, prompted one of his most acclaimed, visually stunning and controversial works, Cowboys. An iconic example of Prince’s re-photographic approach, he plays surrogate to photographs taken for the advertisements of Marlboro cigarettes. Canvases densely populated by 10 gallon hats, spurs and lassoes cleverly evoke yet criticize the stereotypical notions of ‘the cowboy’. This is a view Prince seems to share in his ambigious and bizarre yet somehow rational description of them: “I shot the sheriff… it’s like driving an RV… always on vacation, under the stars, cups of coffee. I’ve always been partial to a good rodeo.”
Despite this being the spark of an ever burning criticism of Prince’s work under copyright laws, the emancipated Marlboro man broke records in 2005 when, without the constraints of cigarette packets and billboards, Untitled from Cowboys sold for over $1 million at auction.
The peculiar normality and relatable innocence of Prince’s comment on how he began getting into photography, “I brought my mother’s camera to Woodstock…” is reflected in his transitory description of photography to painting. This is embodied in his Joke paintings, “The Jokes became the first subject for my paintings. I thought it was a pretty radical subject matter and it needed a traditional presentation, canvas stretchers and paint”. Comedic lines spiked with satire of everyday existence recollect parody in their creation. “I started drawing ‘cartoons’ that I found in magazines. For about a year. Then I dropped the image and concentrated on the punchline.”
But it seemed Prince could not remove himself from appropriated authorship entirely. The Nurse Paintings provide a particularly macabre example of his photographic surrogacy. This time Prince has adopted the covers of pulp romance novels resulting in 42 canvases covered in drippings of red and slashes of white. The ominous and menacing nature of these works hark back to cult 70’s slasher movies.
In 2007 Prince collabrated with Marc Jacobs and the fashion house Louis Vuitton to create a range of handbags which marked a fusion of art, design and commerce. Prince explains: “I had no idea how important hand-bags were in the world. For me they became small buildings… It’s interesting to see one of my handbags in a restaurant or someone walking down the street carrying it on their shoulder.”
It is often the case that this kind of controversy and modern art are well suited. The excitement and media frenzy caused by the former often enhances the reputation of the latter – or at the very least force it into a tacky day-glo spotlight. Richard Prince is no exception. In 1983 Prince re-photographed an image of ten year old Brooke Shields, who was naked from the knee up, slicked in what looks like baby oil and dolled up like a drag queen. To describe the work as disturbing does not do it justice. The image was originally taken by the fashion photographer Gary Gross, and was later re-titled by Prince as Spiritual America. This work was recently removed from the Tate Modern’s Pop Life exhibition by the Obscene Publications Unit of the Metropolitan Police. This was a controversial decision, as a 2.5 x 1.5m silk screen of porn star Ilona Satller’s anus stands proudly in an adjoining room. However, this reflects the contentious nature of the image. After all, a photograph which could possibly be percieved as child pornography is likely to cause an outcry.
When asked for his opinion on the situation, Prince retorted with the aforementioned Bob Dylan song lyrics which commenced the article. Prince is ever so enigmatic. I can’t help but wonder whether the lyrics to Idiot Wind refer to his lucky appropriation of the photograph. The original image was sold for $300 and Prince made just over $151,000 at auction – a tidy profit. The quite blatant associations of the songs title, just reflect furthermore his elusive personality and eccentricity. As far as Spiritual America’s meaning goes, I feel myself concurring with Prince’s own interpretation, it is “the last place on earth God didn’t finish”.
Controversial but always relevant, Richard Prince’s appropriated art simultaneously celebrates and demonizes modern culture. An appropriate end, his equivocal musings on an iconic cultural phenomenon: The American Dream? “To sing the Star Spangled Banner sitting down.”
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I was told by the Tate Gallery that they removed all the other Richard Prince publications from it’s bookshop after the Police paid a visit…..
Wow, what a load…as usual, a man with no imagination, Prince hides behind the artwork of others. How appropriate that he would respond to serious questions of child pornography and its proliferation with lyrics from somebody else’s song…he simply can’t come up with anything meaningful or substantial of his own. The cowboy series is anything but innovative or interesting, and it’s patently obvious to anybody paying attention that Prince is using the images with Phillip Morris’ endorsement (and common, do you really need Prince to point out that Cowboys are iconic American images…umm…John Ford, the Rifleman, Gunsmoke…??). Prince’s work (which basically started with appropriating everything he could from a Playboy…the girls, the jokes, the cartoons, the cigarette ads…even his interest in literature) has gone nowhere and demonizes nothing…he’s surrounded himself with things that are cool and the morons of the art would have reasoned that he must then be cool. But alas, Dylan is cool, Rock is cool, biker chicks and porn…Richard is just a broken record endlessly quoting the work done by others and waiting for others to find the meaning in words and works not his own. Never relevant, always boring…the most overrated artist of our age. oh, and the “Father of appropriation”? You mean Duchamp? That’s Duchamp…not Richard. Warhol, Lichtenstein, and any number of great figures who stole (and then made great art from those originals) stand between Duchamp and Prince…