Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York Private Collection, Beverly Hills Heritage Auctions, Texas, October 26, 2011, lot 72031 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Catalogue Essay
“I make different bodies of work in different media. I don't think too much about what's in or out of style. My heroes are people like Man Ray and Bruce Nauman, who just do what they want to do.” - Richard Prince
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.