Richard Prince - Untitled (Jawbone)

Richard Prince (American; b.1949)
Untitled (Jawbone)
2016
C-print
Edition 85 of 100
18.5” x 12.5” (sheet), framed
Signed, dated and numbered verso 'Prince 85/100 2016'
Published by Karma, New York

“Richard Prince Sucks” - so reads the title of a recent review of Prince’s work on Artnet. But it is not just his recent work that is seen as controversial. Indeed, Prince has been making waves amongst the media and the traditional art avant-garde since he first started showing his work in the early 1980s.

An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2009 would place Prince in a group called the ‘Pictures Generation’ - a group of artists active during the 1970s and ‘80s whose work made use of images appropriated from mass culture. A practice he continues to this day.

Prince mines mass-media images to redefine concepts of ownership and authorship. In his “Cowboys” series he re-photographed Marlboro ads, cropping out text to generate close-ups of mythical cowboy figures. His “Nurse” works were produced by scanning the covers of pulp paperbacks, transferring them to canvas, and painting over the prints.

And now, according to the New York Times, he is regarded as "one of the most revered artists of his generation”. So - does he indeed suck or is he one of the most important artists of our time? I’m betting on the latter.