Richard Prince

In the mid 1970s the American artist Richard Prince (b. 1955) worked a side job at Time-Life Inc., in the tear-sheet department. His duties involved cutting out articles from published magazine issues. After the texts were removed and sent to the editorial department, all that remained were the ads. Fascinated by the glittering luxury items and perfect photo models, Prince started re-photographing the photographs. He ended up creating new pictures which seemed to comment on American society’s superficial values and striving after status.

One of Prince’s key works is the photograph Spiritual America (1983)*. It shows a naked girl wearing heavy make-up, posing in a luxurious bathroom with props suggesting sensuality and hedonism. The girl’s pre-pubescent body is moist with bath-steam and glistens with oil. In the foreground is an erotic bronze figuring by Henry Moore, and in the background a similarly sinuous figurine.

This photo of the child star Brook Shields was originally taken by Gary Gross in 1975. Shields is perhaps best known for her roles in the films Pretty Baby (1978) and Blue Lagoon (1980). The photo was commissioned and authorized by Shield’s mother and intended for a 1976 Playboy publication called Sugar ‘n’ Spice. In 1981 Shields tried to purchase the rights to the photo-negatives and the case ended in court. This incited Prince to re-photograph the controversial picture and to call it Spiritual America, a title borrowed from Alfred Stieglitz’ 1923 close-up of a castrated horse.

In commenting on the picture, Prince has said, 'A body with two different sexes, maybe more, and a head that looks like it’s got a different birthday'. Prince is not showing us Shield’s pre-pubescent nakedness in order to provoke us, but to get us to reflect over this child star’s history and her position in the celebrity industry.

Rotations #2 also includes three other works by Richard Prince. Untitled (Cowboy) (1989) is a re-photographing of a Marlboro cigarette advertisement. Marlboro uses American cowboys to give its product an identity, but Prince has removed the logo and text and focused solely on the beautiful imagery of the American West. Prince, in this picture, brings home to us the mechanics of commercial branding.

What It Means (1990) is from a series of paintings featuring jokes Prince has culled from 1950s American newspapers. The flat colourfield with the joke, printed like a stripe across the middle, playfully recalls American abstract paintings from the 1950s. Untitled (2007) also relates to the history of American painting. Here Prince visually quotes Willem de Kooning’s roughly painted female figures, combining them with the porn industry’s polished nudity. In so doing, he dismantles the distinction between acknowledged art, porn and pulp fiction.

By appropriating imagery from the advertisement industry, Prince situates himself in a tradition stemming from Andy Warhol, and invites comparison with his contemporaries Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons and Cady Noland, as well as younger artists such as Ida Ekblad and Lizzie Bougatsos.

EB/HBU

* The work is no longer a part of the exhibition.