Richard Prince

A study of a work from Richard Prince's series of Untitled (couples) that considers the long history of the image and Prince as a pioneer of the appropriated image.

Recent essays by Richard Prince; reprints of historical texts by Eve Babitz, Joan Didion, and Kim Gordon; and a new essay by Rachel Kushner. Exhibition: Gagosian West 24th Street, New York, USA (01.11-19.12.2018).

Prince's upstate New York" Second House" makes a home, literally, for the increasingly physical work of an artist once best known for his studio photographs of magazines. "The Second House" documents his ranch-style gallery, the long grass around it, and the 1973 Plymouth Barracuda parked in the yard, and commemorates the Guggenheim's purchase of the site, which they pledge to open to the public for ten years.

Ilse Zhalina is the daughter of one of Melnek’s more prominent merchants. She has lived most of her life surrounded by the trappings of wealth and privilege. Many would consider hers a happy lot. But there are dark secrets, especially in the best of families. Ilse has learned that for a young woman of her beauty and social station, to be passive and silent is the best way to survive. When Ilse finally meets the older man she is to marry, she realizes he is far crueler and more deadly than her father could ever be. Ilse chooses to run. This choice will change her life forever. And it will lead her to Raul Kosenmark, master of one of the land’s most notorious pleasure houses…and who is, as Ilse discovers, a puppetmaster of a different sort altogether. Ilse discovers a world where every pleasure has a price and there are levels of magic and intrigue she once thought unimaginable. She also finds the other half of her heart. Passion Play is Beth Bernobich's first novel.

Perfectly beautiful yet strangely faceless, hundreds of interchangeable fashion models and bare-breasted biker chicks find themselves reincarnated in the artwork of Richard Prince. Prince recycles these American (male) pop culture fantasies from found materials, most often advertising images and magazine layouts which he rephotographs, repaints or overpaints, arranges in collages, or breaks down into fragments. Images of women representing various spheres of trivial culture, marketing iconography like the Marlboro Man, and figures borrowed from chauvinist cartoons are central motifs in his art. Without comment, Prince cites and duplicates them in supposedly defunct role clichas that remain stubbornly present even today. Women goes even further, presenting a diverse yet decidedly thematic selection of appropriations chosen by the artist himself and ranging across his body of work. From bad sexist jokes to the covers of books written by female authors, from rockin' out naked biker chicks to Kate Moss, from a rephotographed Untitled Film Still to penny-novel nurses--these are Richard Prince's Women.

"A distinction [Prince's] work brings out in particular is between pictures & what you do with pictures, between art & how art is used."-Stuart Morgan, Artscribe