Sex, humor and cynicism collide in Richard Prince’s Untitled (Cartoon), 2014. A bitingly witty example of an extensive body of cartoon-based works begun in 1984, the present work exemplifies Prince’s hallmark practice of appropriating images and text with its incorporation of a bawdy one-panel cartoon from Playboy Magazine. The visual narrative, although partially obscured by Prince’s frenetic scribbling, employs the recognizable trope of a partner being caught in the act of infidelity. The male figure’s enraged glare is punctuated by drops of violent pink ink as he begins to take off his jacket as if preparing to fight his rival. However, his violent fury is met with flippant indifference from his female partner: “Don’t be so ridiculous, Robert. He’s already proved his masculinity.” The nonchalance of the one-liner belies deeper, more sinister anxieties about emasculation and monogamy.
“I love cartoons. Funny drawings. Serious humor. Subversive. Laugh out loud. Another way of surviving. They’re part of the magazine. And I’ve always liked to open up a magazine and see what’s up. Every magazine is an Inside World.”
—Richard Prince
In keeping with his long-standing process of co-opting pre-existing media, Prince calls attention to his piracy of the original image which has made him an icon. His explosive crimson linework in the present work, along with washes and scattered marks of pink and black ink, simultaneously amplify and obfuscate elements of the drawing. A prominent horizontal line links the woman’s mouth to her male partner, an ironically reductive symbol of their now-fraught relationship. Meanwhile, the frowning mouth of the secret lover is exaggerated with thick black ink, yet his face is in turn covered by red strokes, effectively erasing him from the scene. Ultimately, in Untitled (Cartoon), the artist affirms that for him, cultural production is not a bastion of authorship, but rather a site for continual play and reinterpretation.
