Provenance

Gladstone Gallery, New York; Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Collection, Boston; Luhring Augustine, New York
Exhibited

New York, Gladstone Gallery, Richard Prince, April 30 – June 18, 2005; New York, Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, September 28, 2007 – January 9, 2008; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, March 22 – June 15, 2008 and London, Serpentine Gallery, June 26 – September 7, 2008, Richard Prince: Spiritual America
Literature

B. Appel, “Richard Prince,” artcritical.com (online content), July 2005; N. Spector, Richard Prince, New York, 2007, p. 187 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay

Can a joke be a painting? More to the point, can a painting be a joke? Richard Prince has spent the better part of the last two decades trying to answer these questions, engaging in a voyage to the center of painting’s very own heart of darkness. Starting his journey in 1987, Prince broadened his aesthetic strategies beyond the realm of photographic appropriation and into the body, if not the soul, of painterly expression. As he moved in this painterly direction, was Prince the equivalent of Marlon Brando’s Kurtz in Francis Ford Copppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now, disappearing up the river into Camboida in an attempt to take post war painting practices to their excessive logical conclusions? Or was he more akin to Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard, setting out on a classified recon mission with orders to exterminate painting with extreme prejudice? In the end, perhaps he is more like the comedian Bob Hope singing his theme song “Thanks for the Memories” on a USO tour in Saigon because at the core of his painting agenda rests the repetitious, twisted structural logic of the joke, a staple of old school stand up comedy.
D. Fogle “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Joke (Painting),” Parkett 72, New York/Zurich 2004, p. 108
Oh Henry, completed in 2003, is a large-scale joke painting Richard Prince rendered on a smooth, powdery surface. The plush pastel hues shy away from his more stark, monochromatic paintings from earlier on in his career. The present lot embodies an advanced take on his joke theme, employing a wider range of color that ultimately presents a composition more in tune with his painterly Nurse series and most recent de Kooning-esque Women series, where vivid colors and imagery coalesce. The joke itself, written large across the entire width of the canvas of the left canvas and fading into the t-shirt covered right panel, is stenciled in place with a conviction for design; Prince’s large yellow Helvetica type breaks the canvas in two, yet simultaneously appears to meld each visual reference taking place before your eyes in a highly stylized and provocative manner.
Mr. Prince has devoted his career to this surface unreality, attempting to collect, count and order its ways. He has said that his goal is a ‘virtuoso real’, something beyond real that is patently fake. But his art is inherently corrosive; it eats through things. His specialty is a carefully constructed hybrid that is also some kind of joke, charged by conflicting notions of high, low and lower... [Borscht belt jokes] are a signature staple…appearing on modernist monochromes, on fields of checks and as arbitrary punch lines for postwar New Yorker or Playboy cartoons. These examples of a better class of humor are variously whole, fragmented, steeped in white or piled into colorful, nearly abstract patterns yet still retain their familiarity. The same jokes occur in different works, alternately write big or little, sharp or fading, straight or rippled as if spoken by someone on a bender.
R. Smith, “Pilfering From a culture Out of Joint”, The New York Times, September 28, 2007

Prince started telling jokes, or rather retelling jokes, in the 1980s when he began to reproduce illustrations from The New Yorker in graphite on an intimate scale. His attraction to the humor in the cheap joke is perfectly in tune with his interest in low cultural forms. These works soon evolved away from the cartoons to the purer text of lone jokes on canvas, such as the present lot. The artist explains, “It occurred to me that if I was to call them ‘jokes’ then I would need to get rid of the illustration and focus on the punch line” (Richard Prince in B. Appel www.rovetv.net (online content)).

By separating a cartoon from its caption and adding a non sequitur of a joke, Prince creates strange, hybrid emblems that offer mutable narratives. What emerges from these disjunctions of image and text is a transgressive perversity, an uninhibited play of meaning in which attraction, deceit, failure, sex, and death intermingle to produce work that is at once erotic, humorous, and macabre. Through this deliberate confusion of discursive systems, Prince brings to the surface the hostility, fear, and shame fueling much American humor. What began as a fairly abstract exercise, according to the artist, ‘gradually became tragic in a quite unexpected way.’
N. Spector, Richard Prince, New York, 2008, p

Mining the lowbrow Borscht-Belt humor, a comedic genre developed in the Catskills by comedians like Jack Benny, Sid Ceasar and Rodney Dangerfield, Prince appropriates one-liners that can be both straight forward funny and also have layers of subtext. In the present lot, the joke reads: “Oh Henry let’s not park here, Oh Henry let’s not park, Oh Henry let’s not. Oh Henry let’s. Oh Henry. Oh. Another One, Oh Henry Let’s”

This Borscht Belt classic, part of the Prince repertory or ‘act’ if you like, is a ‘prime’ example of the “joke” paintings the artist began back in 1987 (after 10 years of working within the photographic appropriation/re-photography mode) which mines the underlying character of 50s style, middle American humor. Confronting issues of sexual identity, fantasy and frustration as well as class and social acceptability, the brilliant use of the t-shirt in the second panel of the diptych painting—an ‘actual’ Blue Collar staple of costume and rebellion—adds a three dimensional, visual cue to the “yuk-proven” efficacy of the joke.
B. Appel, “Richard Prince,” artcritical.com (online content), July 2005
Artist Biography
Richard Prince
American • 1947
For more than three decades, Prince's universally celebrated practice has pursued the subversive strategy of appropriating commonplace imagery and themes – such as photographs of quintessential Western cowboys and "biker chicks," the front covers of nurse romance novellas, and jokes and cartoons – to deconstruct singular notions of authorship, authenticity and identity.
Starting his career as a member of the Pictures Generation in the 1970s alongside such contemporaries as Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo and Sherrie Levine, Prince is widely acknowledged as having expanded the accepted parameters of art-making with his so-called "re-photography" technique – a revolutionary appropriation strategy of photographing pre-existing images from magazine ads and presenting them as his own. Prince's practice of appropriating familiar subject matter exposes the inner mechanics of desire and power pervading the media and our cultural consciousness at large, particularly as they relate to identity and gender constructs.
View More Works

113

Richard Prince

Oh Henry

2003

Acrylic and t-shirts on canvas.
75 x 110 in. (190.5 x 279.4 cm).

Estimate
$1,000,000 - 1,200,000

Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010
New York

101
Kelley Walker
Untitled
Estimate $70,000 - 90,000
Sold for $266,500
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102
George Condo
Young Woman with Pearl Necklace
Estimate $120,000 - 180,000
Sold for $194,500
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103
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled (Plan B)
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $602,500
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104
Urs Fischer
The Grass Munchers
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $902,500
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105
Ugo Rondinone
21. Mai 2006
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $104,500
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106
Rosemarie Trockel
Untitled
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $206,500
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107
Mark Handforth
Chain Trashcan
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $62,500
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108
Mark Bradford
All I Need is “One” More Chance
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $542,500
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109
Antony Gormley
Sublimate II
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $554,500
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110
Damien Hirst
Untitled
Estimate $700,000 - 900,000
Sold for $782,500
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111
Lisa Yuskavage
KK in Red Room
Estimate $150,000 - 250,000
Sold for $230,500
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112
Jeff Koons
Stay in Tonight
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $698,500
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113
Richard Prince
Oh Henry
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,200,000
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114
Kehinde Wiley
Support the Army and Look After the People
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $104,500
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115
Barnaby Furnas
Duel (July 4th)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
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116
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Rubber
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $1,762,500
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117
Andy Warhol
Jackie
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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118
Dan Flavin
Untitled (to Jörg Schellmann)
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $266,500
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119
Christopher Wool
Untitled (P447)
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $626,500
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120
Roni Horn
Key and Cue, No. 807: Expectation—is contentment
Estimate $50,000 - 70,000
Sold for $158,500
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121
Steven Parrino
Pull Down
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $506,500
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122
Donald Judd
Untitled (91-138 Menziken)
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $434,500
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123
Anish Kapoor
Untitled
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $812,500
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124
Yayoi Kusama
Infinity Nets (OQ4)
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $422,500
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125
Frank Stella
Khurasan Gate III
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
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126
Robert Mangold
Red February #3
Estimate $180,000 - 250,000
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127
Adolph Gottlieb
Black Note
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $338,500
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128
Kenneth Noland
Untitled
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $542,500
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129
Robert Mangold
Curled Figure XXI Study
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $116,500
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130
Mary Heilmann
Black Dahlia III
Estimate $30,000 - 40,000
Sold for $68,500
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131
Peter Halley
Blue Prison
Estimate $50,000 - 70,000
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132
Donald Judd
Untitled (1968-76)
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $86,500
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133
Mark Tansey
Redeployment
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $962,500
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134
John Baldessari
Lion Jet Truck
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $554,500
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135
Andy Warhol
Brillo Soap Pads Box
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $638,500
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136
Joseph Cornell
Hotel Andromeda
Estimate $150,000 - 250,000
Sold for $170,500
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137
Roy Lichtenstein
Modern Painting
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $422,500
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138
Tom Wesselmann
Sunset Nude (Light)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $914,500
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139
Andy Warhol
Flowers
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $458,500
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140
Andy Warhol
Ads Painting (Rebel Without a Cause [James Dean])
Estimate $700,000 - 900,000
Sold for $602,500
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141
Liza Lou
Offensive/Defensive
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $278,500
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142
Chris Ofili
Silver Moon
Estimate $450,000 - 600,000
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143
George Condo
Widow’s Watch
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $362,500
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144
Lisa Yuskavage
Bad Habits: Asspicking, Foodeating, Headshrinking, Socialclimbing, Motherfucker
Estimate $120,000 - 180,000
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145
Banksy
Untitled (Toxic Marys)
Estimate $150,000 - 250,000
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146
Margherita Manzelli
Miss Missy
Estimate $70,000 - 90,000
Sold for $80,500
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147
Paul McCarthy
Untitled (from Propo-Series) (Peaches)
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
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148
Leandro Erlich
La Vista (The View)
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
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149
Jules de Balincourt
I Infect You, You Infect Me
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $84,100
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150
Wangechi Mutu
Untitled
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $116,500
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151
Wolfgang Tillmans
Supercollider (Refraction) C
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $88,900
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152
Tim Noble and Sue Webster
Lucky
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
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Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010 New York

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Richard Prince

113

Richard Prince

Oh Henry

Contemporary Art Part I

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13 May 2010
New York