Provenance
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York
Sotheby’s, New York, Contemporary Art Part I, May 15, 2001, lot 69
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Catalogue Essay
“…when you’re making a work of art or you’re looking at a work of art, it’s this thing about lives. People’s lives. My life, your life. My friend’s life. The lives of people I don’t know and the lives of dead people. You know you’re looking at something…done with a certain kind of energy that is essentially positive.” - Richard Prince

Combining a sardonic wit with a sharp eye both towards contemporary culture and satire, Richard Prince has established himself as the preeminent pictorial commentator of the 20th and 21st centuries. His appropriation of found imagery, reconstituted and realigned, served to readjust the concept of what could or was art in the late ʼ70s and ʼ80s. By 1995, and the execution of My boyfriend married a girl, Prince was already firmly ensconced as the art world’s critical enfant terrible. His ability to confound the viewer by distorting both the source material and his own artistic position disallows a strictly superficial reading of the work. Despite the seeming literalness of his oeuvre, his own persona and the space of ambivalence and ambiguity that his paintings occupy espouse a surfeit of different understandings and angles.

The present work is an intricate example of a series Prince executed during the ʼ90s, blending his jokes with a more expressionistic style of painting and printing. The text in the painting is truncated from a joke which recurs repeatedly and ends, “who’s bisexual. Claims he’s going to change her. He did three years later she’s a lesbian.” Instead of posing the text on a monochrome background, however, and by truncating it to only its opening line, Prince has perverted the viewer’s expectations. No longer is it an immediately understandable joke, nor an immediately recognizable Prince painting; the work now functions as a twisted inside-art world joke to which we are all now privy.
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

17

Richard Prince

My boyfriend married a girl

1995
silkscreen and acrylic on canvas and graphite
58 x 75 in. (147.3 x 190.5 cm.)
Titled "my boyfriend married a girl" at center left.

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000

Sold for $293,000

Contact Specialist
Zach Miner, Contemporary
Head of Sale zminer@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1256

Alex Heminway, Design
aheminway@phillips.com
+ 1 212 940 1268

Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale

New York Evening Sale 6 March 2014 7pm

1
Edmund de Waal
Rescript
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $43,750
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2
Rob Pruitt
Untitled
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $37,500
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3
KAWS
Untitled
Estimate $180,000 - 250,000
Sold for $257,000
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4
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled (Traminer Alter)
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $461,000
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5
Mark Flood
Wedding Night
Estimate $30,000 - 40,000
Sold for $93,750
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6
Cady Noland
Untitled
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $269,000
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7
Ugo Rondinone
ZWEITERAUGUSTZWEITAUSENDUNDELF (August 20, 2011)
Estimate $120,000 - 180,000
Sold for $173,000
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8
Marc Newson
Micarta Table
Estimate $70,000 - 90,000
Sold for $62,500
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9
Nate Lowman
Mint
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $413,000
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10
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $989,000
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11
Allen Jones
Refrigerator
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $425,000
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12
Andy Warhol
Marilyn Monroe
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $1,805,000
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13
Ken Price
Pink Egg
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $509,000
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14
Wade Guyton
Untitled
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $185,000
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15
Mark Grotjahn
Untitled
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $118,750
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16
Adam McEwen
Bomber Harris
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
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17
Richard Prince
My boyfriend married a girl
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $293,000
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18
This lot is no longer available.
19
Olafur Eliasson
Timezone Lamp
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $118,750
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20
Sterling Ruby
Alabaster SR10-2
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $293,000
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21
Jacob Kassay
Untitled
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $125,000
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22
Sam Moyer
Fault Line
Estimate $15,000 - 25,000
Sold for $43,750
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23
This lot is no longer available.
24
Jeroen Verhoeven
Cinderella Table
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $137,000
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25
Sergej Jensen
Untitled
Estimate $70,000 - 90,000
Sold for $87,500
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26
Allora & Calzadilla
Intermission (Halloween Iraq 1)
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $81,250
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27
Ned Vena
Untitled
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
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28
Joe Bradley
Untitled (Human Form)
Estimate $120,000 - 180,000
Sold for $137,000
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29
Keith Haring
Untitled (Figure on a Baby)
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $167,000
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30
Martin Kippenberger
Untitled (Mushrooms)
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $185,000
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31
Yu Youhan
Mao Voting
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $269,000
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32
Os Gêmeos
I Don't Care
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $149,000
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33
Oscar Murillo
Untitled (Chicken and Chips)
Estimate $120,000 - 180,000
Sold for $317,000
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Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale

New York Evening Sale 6 March 2014 7pm

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Provenance

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Richard Prince

17

Richard Prince

My boyfriend married a girl

Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale

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