Everything about Richard Prince totally explained
» For an article on the British actor who murdered William Terriss, see Richard Archer Prince.
Richard Prince, (born
1949 in the
U.S.-controlled
Panama Canal Zone, now part of
Republic of Panama) is an
American painter and
photographer. His works have often been the subject of debates within the art world. Trained as a
figure painter, Prince began creating
collages containing photographs in 1975. His image, ‘Untitled (Cowboy), a
rephotograph constructed from
cigarette advertisements, was the first ‘photograph’ to raise more than $1 million at
auction when it was sold at
Christie's New York in 2005, despite violating numerous copyright laws.
Starting in 1977, Prince created controversy by re-photographing four photographs which previously appeared in the
New York Times. Within the art world, this became part of a major discussion concerning
authorship and authenticity of photographic images, as well as photographic
copyright issues. This continued into 1983, when his work
Spiritual America featured Garry Gross's photo of
Brooke Shields at the age of 10, standing in a bathtub, as an allusion to precocious sexuality and to the
Alfred Stieglitz photograph by the same name. The display of this image led to lawsuits by Shields' mother and the original photographer, and led to further discussion within the art community, concerning the role of
voyeurism within
photography. His
Jokes series (beginning 1986) concerns the
sexual fantasies and
sexual frustrations of
middle-class America, using
stand-up comedy and
burlesque humour.
After living in
New York City for 25 years, Prince moved to upstate New York. His minimuseum, Second House, was owned by the
Guggenheim Museum, but was hit by lightning and burned down after being up for only six years from 2001 to 2007.
The nurse paintings
Nurse paintings is a series of
paintings of
nurses by Prince based on the covers of
pulp romance novels.
Technique
Actual covers of books were
scanned to create the foundation for the paintings—the titles and the images of the nurses. They are
ink jet print on canvas with
acrylic overlay and are fairly large in scale.
Richard Prince used the technique of modern
rephotography and this series is notable for the technique of layering
digital and media: the application of an analogue medium (acrylic) to a digitalized print (ink jet) of a digitalized image (scan) of an analogue
print (book cover) of an analogue artwork (original art portrayed on the book cover).
Subjects
In the series of 21 paintings, the nurses all wear caps and their mouths are covered by surgical masks, although in some of the paintings the red lips bleed through the masks. The final presentations preserve the title and nurse image from each of the book covers, though all else is obscured.
Titles
(
all works 2002 - 2003)
- A Nurse Involved, 72 x 45 inches
- Aloha Nurse, 58 x 36 inches
- Danger Nurse at Work, 93 x 56 inches
- Doctor's Nurse, 58 x 36 inches
- Dude Ranch Nurse, 80 x 52 inches
- Graduate Nurse, 89 x 52 inches
- Heartbreak Nurse, 54 x 64 inches
- Lake Resort Nurse
- New England Nurse
- Nurse Barclay's Dilemma, 70 x 48 inches
- Piney Woods Nurse
- Surfing Nurse #2, 78 1/4 x 91 inches
- Surgical Nurse, 58 x 36 inches
- Annmarie is stupid
Current Works
Prince's most recent series of paintings appear at first glance to be a throwback to more traditional genres of figurative art, and a departure from the pulpy and kitchy content of the Nurse and Jokes series respectively. In these newest works, all from the beginning of 2007, Prince utilizes semi-pornographic collaged inkjet prints overlayed with acrylic paint in the style of DeKooning. Notably, it's the faces and extremities- hands and feet- which get the most direct treatment from the artist, bulging and distorting with an elegantly contained expressive energy. These works lack the obvious linguistic recontextualizing of the Jokes series, opting instead for a purely visual idiom. This overlaying of paint onto photo would seem to suggest the implicit failure of either medium to truly represent the subject, instead referencing the act of the artist as curator of discreet visual inputs. In this sense then, Prince holds fast to the methodology of appropriation, whilst simultaneously opening up the visual surface for more stupid directly expressive treatments, thereby enriching the meaning of both.
In 2007, Prince collaborated with the iconic fashion designer
Marc Jacobs on his Spring 2008 collection for the prestigous French label
Louis Vuitton. The collection itself was inspired, in part, by Prince's
Nurse Paintings.
In an interview for style.com Jacobs stated that after he asked Prince to collaborate with him for Louis Vuitton, Prince started to look to paperbacks that were set in iconic cities 'after dark'. Eventually, this inspired the collection, and as Marc Jacobs puts it, "(Prince) asked me, what about Louis Vuitton after dark?".
His untitled work involving the body of a 1970
Dodge Challenger and high-tech 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 is being created for
Frieze. He also has another car sculpture in the Guggenhiem called
American Prayer. It 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’s a cement block.
Bibliography
Richard Prince Nurse Paintings. Distributed Art Publishers. ISBN 0-9703422-1-7
Women. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-7757-1451-0. Book of photos.
American English. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2003. ISBN 3-88375-717-9. Photos of American and English first editions.
4 X 4. Korinsha Press & Co., 1997. Reprinted by Powerhouse Books, 1999. ISBN 1-57687-034-0. Book of photos, also includes interview of Prince with Larry Clark.
Adult Comedy Action Drama. Scalo, 1995. ISBN 1-881616-36-3. Book of photos.Further Information
Get more info on 'Richard Prince'.
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