Richard Prince (born August 6, 1949) is an American Conceptual artist and Pop artist who rose to prominence in the 1980's in the East Village, Manhattan. He is best known for depicting models, living room furniture, watches, pens, and jewellery using Rephotography and Appropriation to reflect American pop culture. Prince has been the subject of major survey exhibitions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1992); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1993); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1993); Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2001, traveled to Kunsthalle Zürich and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2007, traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2008); and Serpentine Gallery, London (2008).[ Richard Prince: Cowboys, February 21 - April 6, 2013 Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles.] Prince is regarded as "one of the most revered artists of his generation" according to The New York Times[Randy Kennedy, January 12, 2017, The New York Times, Richard Prince, Protesting Trump, Returns Art Payment, Retrieved January 14, 2017, "... he decided recently that he could no longer countenance a piece of his residing in the collection of the Trump family ..."] alongside Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, Vikky Alexander, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and Mike Bidlo.
Early life
Richard Prince was born on the 6th of August 1949,
in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone, now part of the Republic of Panama. During an interview in 2000 with Julie L. Belcove, he responded to the question of why his parents were in the Zone, by saying "they worked for the government." Prince was first interested in the art of the American abstract expressionist
Jackson Pollock. "I was very attracted to the idea of someone who was by themselves, fairly antisocial, kind of a loner, someone who was noncollaborative."
[Richard Prince, June 1, 2000, Fairchild Publications] Prince grew up during the height of Pollock's career, making his work accessible. The 1956
Time magazine article dubbing Pollock "Jack the Dripper" made the thought of pursuing art as career possible. After finishing high school in 1967, Prince set off for Europe at age 18. Prince has said that his attraction to New York was instigated by the famous photograph of
Franz Kline gazing out the window of his 14th Street studio. Prince described the picture as "a man content to be alone, pursuing the outside world from the sanctum of his studio."
[Nancy Spector, Richard Prince]
In 1973, Prince moved to New York[ Richard Prince Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.] and joined publishing company Time Inc. His job at the Time Inc. library involved providing the company's various magazines with of articles.[Steven Daly (December 2007), Richard Prince’s Outside Streak Vanity Fair.]
Work and career
Prince's first solo exhibition took place in June 1980 during a residency at the CEPA gallery in Buffalo, New York.
His short book
Menthol Wars was published as part of the residency.
In 1981 Prince had his first West Coast solo exhibition at Jancar Kuhlenschmidt Gallery in Los Angeles. In 1985, he spent four months making art in a rented house in Venice, Los Angeles.
[Hunter Drohojowska-Philp (April 10, 1993), De-Construction Worker: Richard Prince's 'First House' Launches Regen Projects Los Angeles Times.] Prince had very little experience with photography, but he has said in interviews that all he needed was a subject, the medium would follow, whether it be paint and brush or camera and film. He compared his new method of searching out interesting advertisements to "beachcombing." His first series during this time focused on models, living room furniture, watches, pens, and jewellery. Pop culture became the focus of his work. Prince described his experience of appropriation thus:
"At first it was pretty reckless. Plagiarizing someone else’s photograph, making a new picture effortlessly. Making the exposure, looking through the lens and clicking, felt like an unwelling . . . a whole new history without the old one. It absolutely destroyed any associations I had experienced with putting things together. And of course the whole thing about the naturalness of the film’s ability to appropriate. I always thought it had a lot to do with having a chip on your shoulder."[Kruger, Barbara & Richard Price, "Interview", BOMB Magazine Spring, 1982]
In the late 1980s, Prince, like his contemporaries
Lorna Simpson and
Barbara Kruger, as well as many of his
Conceptual Art precursors, played with image and text in a strategy that was becoming increasingly popular. Prince put jokes among cartoons, often from
The New Yorker. On the topic of found photographs, Prince said, "Oceans without surfers, cowboys without Marlboros…Even though I’m aware of the classicism of the images. I seem to go after images that I don’t quite believe. And, I try to re-present them even more unbelievably."
[Heiferman, Marvin. "Richard Prince", "BOMB Magazine" Summer, 1988.]
In 1983, in the wake of the legal battle over ownership of the photos, Prince photographed one of Garry Gross' photos of 10-year-old Brooke Shields standing naked in a bathtub. He developed it, put it in a gilding frame and, displayed it without labelling or explanation, in a shopfront in a then rundown street in Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Later, when a Prince print of Shields was included in his 2009 Spiritual America exhibit at the Tate Modern, it created a stir. It was removed from an exhibition after a warning from the police.
Prince created a numbered series of 10 prints (and two artists proofs) measuring 20 inches by 24 inches (50.8 cm. x 60.9 cm.) of his reproduction of the Gross/Shields photo. In May 2014, copy #10 of Prince's reproduction of the Gross photo was auctioned off by Christie's, fetching a price of $3.97 million. This surpassed his previous high for a photo of $3.4 million, set at Sotheby’s New York in 2007.
Untitled Cowboys
Untitled (Cowboy) has since been credited by
Time Magazine as one of the "Top 100 most influential images of all time."
The image is set in the Western U.S., in an arid landscapes with stone outcrops flanked by cacti and tumbleweeds, with a backdrop of sunset. The advertisements were staged with the utmost attention to detail. Taken from Marlboro cigarette advertisements of the
Marlboro Man, they represent an idealized figure of American masculinity
[ Untitled (Cowboy): Behind Richard Prince's Photographs & Appropriation|100 Photos|TIME on YouTube] and question how original and realistic the commercial depiction of a "macho man on the horse" is.
The Marlboro Man was the iconic equivalent of later brands like
Ralph Lauren, which used the polo pony image to identify and associate its brand. "Every week. I'd see one and be like, Oh that's mine, Thank you," Prince stated in an interview.
[ New York, May 2, 2005.] Prince extrapolated in conversation with Steve Lafreiniere published in
Artforum in 2003: "I had limited technical skills regarding the camera. Actually I had no skills. I played the camera. I used a cheap commercial lab to blow up the pictures. I made editions of two. I never went into a
darkroom."
Jokes, Gangs, and Hoods
Prince in paid homage to "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll" in American niches as seen through magazines. He depicted subcultures such as the motorcycle-obsessed, hot rod enthusiasts, surfers, and heavy metal music fans. Prince's made his first Joke painting circa 1985, in New York, when he was living in the back room of 303 Gallery located on Park Avenue South.
In a 2000 interview with Julie L. Belcove, Prince called the joke paintings "what I wanted to become known for." When asked to identify the artistic genre of his Jokes, Prince responded, "the Joke paintings are abstract. Especially in Europe, if you can't speak English."
Cars
An untitled work consists of the body of a 1970
Dodge Challenger and high-performance parts such as a 660 hp Hemi engine, custom interior, black wheel wells, 14-inch tires in the front and 16 inch in the back, a pale orange paint job with a flat black T/A hood, as well as various decals and emblems. Another car sculpture, called
American Prayer, is a 1968
Dodge Charger that has been completely emptied of any engine parts and interiors and is stripped of any paint and then powder coated. In place of the engine block there is a cement block.
Nurse Paintings
The Nurse Paintings are a series inspired by the covers and titles of inexpensive novels that were commonly sold at newspaper stands and delis (
Pulp magazine ). . They debuted in 2003 at Barbara Gladstone Galleries, who along with
Larry Gagosian, represents Prince.
Memorabilia
Prince has built up a large collection of
Beat music books and papers. Prince owns several copies of
On the Road by
Jack Kerouac, including one inscribed to Kerouac's mother, one famously read on
The Steve Allen Show, the original proof copy of the book and an original galley, as well as the copy owned by
Neal Cassady (the Dean Moriarty character in the book), with Cassady's signature and marginal notes.
[Pendle, George. " Beats Art". Summer 2009, Modern Painters.]
Litigation
While Prince re-contextualizes images by others to redefine them, he has also failed to acknowledge those preceding photographers whose work he appropriates.
For the
Untitled (Cowboy) Series, this includes Norm Clasen and a handful of others.
Clasen has expressed being aggrieved over the failure to attribute his work saying: "If you see somebody's copied your work, there's something deep down in you that says "I'm the author of that."'
Patrick Cariou copyright infringement suit
In December 2008, photographer Patrick Cariou filed suit against Prince,
Gagosian Gallery,
Larry Gagosian and Rizzoli International Publications in Federal district court for copyright infringement in work shown at Prince's Canal Zone exhibit at the Gagosian gallery.
Prince was charged with wrongfully appropriating 35 photographs made by Cariou. Several of the pieces were barely changed by Prince. Prince also made 28 paintings that included images from Cariou's
Yes Rasta book. The book featured a series of photographs of Rastafarians that Cariou had taken in Jamaica.
[ French Photographer Patrick Cariou on His Copyright Suit Victory Against Richard Prince BLOUINARTINFO.com]
On March 18, 2011, US District Judge Deborah A. Batts ruled against Prince, Gagosian Gallery, Inc., and Lawrence Gagosian. The court found that the use by Prince was not fair use (his primary defence), and Cariou's issue of liability for copyright infringement was granted in its entirety.[Brian Boucher, "Landmark Copyright Lawsuit Cariou v. Prince Is Settled", Art in America, March 18, 2014.]
Appropriation of Emily Ratajkowski's Image
In 2014, Prince took one of Emily Ratajkowski's
Instagram posts without her consent and included the image in his "New Portraits" exhibition at the
Gagosian Gallery in New York.
Seven years later, Ratajkowski took a photograph of herself standing in front of the painting, and created a non-fungible token (NFT) from it.
The NFT sold at auction at Christie's for $175,000. "I hope to symbolically set a precedent for women and ownership online, one that allows for women to have ongoing authority over their image and to receive rightful compensation for its usage and distribution," Ratajkowski wrote on
Twitter.
Ratajkowski describes the event in the popular essay for
The Cut, titled "Buying Myself Back".
The controversy raises questions about personality rights and who gets to benefit from the use of one's image.
Eric McNatt and Donald Graham infringement suits
In 2016, photographer Donald Graham sued Prince for violating the copyright on his 1998 photograph,
Rastafarian Smoking a Joint by including the photograph in his "New Portraits" series.
In May 2023, a New York judge ruled that Prince's artwork
Untitled (Portrait of Rastajay92) was not "transformative" enough to shield Prince from litigation, and that Graham's copyright infringement case can proceed to trial.
Photographer Eric McNatt similarly sued Prince in 2016 for infringing on his copyright to his portrait of
Kim Gordon, co-founder of the band
Sonic Youth.
On January 26, 2024, the two linked cases were settled, with damages awarded to Graham and McNatt, but without any admission of infringement by Prince.
In 2025, Prince exhibited a recording of his deposition from the case as a
titled
Deposition.
Notable exhibitions
"Richard Prince: American Prayer," an exhibition of American literature and ephemera from the artist's collection,
[Robert P. Walzer (November 26, 2011), An Artist Amasses a Rare Collection The Wall Street Journal.] was on view at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris in 2011.
[ Richard Prince, May 24 - August 27, 2011 Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong.] Prince's work has also appeared numerous group exhibitions, including in Bienal de São Paulo (1983),
Whitney Biennial (1985, 1987, 1997, and 2004), Biennale of Sydney (1986),
Venice Biennale (1988 and 2007), and
Documenta (1992).
Personal life
Prince lives in New York with his wife, the artist Noel Grunwaldt.
Bibliography
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O'Brien, Glenn et al. Richard Prince, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2007.
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Collings, Matthew, Richard Prince Nurse Paintings, DAP, New York, 2004.
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Women. Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2004.
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Rian, Jeff, Rosetta Brooks, Lucy Sante, Richard Prince, Phaidon Press, 2004.
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American English, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Cologne, 2003. . Photos of American and English first editions.
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4 × 4. Korinsha Press & Co., 1997. Reprinted by Powerhouse Books, 1999. . Book of photos, also includes interview of Prince with Larry Clark.
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Adult Comedy Action Drama. Scalo, 1995. . Book of photos.
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Prince, Richard. "Inside World." Kent Fine Art, New York, 1989.
See also
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Just Another Asshole
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Metro Pictures Gallery
External links
