Richard Prince (born 1949) is an American painter and photographer. Prince began copying other photographer's work in 1975. His image, Untitled (Cowboy), a rephotographing of a photograph taken originally by Sam Abell and appropriated from a cigarette advertisement was the first rephotograph to raise more than $1 million at auction when it was sold at Christie's New York in 2005. In 2008 his painting 'Overseas Nurse' from 2002 fetched a record breaking $8,452,000 at Sotheby's in London.
Re-photography
uses appropriation as its own focus: artists pull from the works of others and
the worlds they depict to create their own work. Appropriation art became popular
in the late 1970s.
Richard Prince
had very little experience with photography, but he has said in interviews that
all he needed was a subject, the medium would follow, whether it be paint and
brush or camera and film. He compared his new method of searching out
interesting advertisements to "beachcombing." Prince described his
experience of appropriation thus:
“At first it
was pretty reckless. Plagiarizing someone else’s photograph, making a new
picture effortlessly. Making the exposure, looking through the lens and
clicking, felt like an unwelling . . . a whole new history without the old one.
It absolutely destroyed any associations I had experienced with putting things
together. And of course the whole thing about the naturalness of the film’s
ability to appropriate. I always thought it had a lot to do with having a chip
on your shoulder.”
In December
2008, photographer Patrick Cariou filed suit against Richard Prince in Federal
district court for copyright infringement in work shown at Prince's Canal Zone
exhibit at the Gagosian gallery. He wrongfully appropriated 35 photographs made
by Cariou. Several of the pieces were barely changed by Prince. Prince also
made 28 paintings that included images from Cariou’s Yes Rasta book. The
book featured a series of photographs of Rastafarians that Cariou had taken in
Jamaica.
On March 18,
2011, US District Judge Deborah A. Batts ruled against Prince, Gagosian
Gallery, Inc., and Lawrence Gagosian. The court found that the use by Prince
was not fair use (his primary defense), and Cariou's issue of liability for
copyright infringement was granted in its entirety. On April 25, 2013, the US
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed Judge Batts's ruling, stating
that Prince's use of the photographs in 25 works was transformative and thus
fair use. Five less transformative works were sent back to the lower court for
review. The case settled in 2014.
Prince's series
known as the Cowboys, produced from 1980 to 1992, and ongoing, is his most
famous group of rephotographs. Taken from Marlboro cigarette advertisements of
the Marlboro Man, they represent an idealized figure of American masculinity. "Every
week. I'd see one and be like, Oh that's mine, Thank you," Prince stated
in an interview.
Prince's
Cowboys displayed men in boots and ten-gallon hats, with horses, lassos, spurs
and all the fixings that make up the stereotypical image of a cowboy. They were
set in the Western U.S., in arid landscapes with stone outcrops flanked by
cacti and tumbleweeds, with backdrops of sunsets. The advertisements were
staged with the utmost attention to detail.
It has been
suggested that his works raise the question of what is real, what is a real
cowboy, and what makes it so. Prince's photographs of these advertisements
attempt to prompt one to decide how real are media images.
The subjects of
Prince's rephotographs are the photos of others. He is photographing the works
of other photographers, who in the case of the cowboys, had been hired by
Marlboro to create images depicting cowboys. Prince described his process in a
2003 interview by Steve Lafreiniere in Artforum. "I had limited technical
skills regarding the camera. Actually I had no skills. I played the camera. I
used a cheap commercial lab to blow up the pictures. I made editions of two. I
never went into a darkroom.”
Art is strange
is it not? The above is from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Prince
The Word of the
Day is TRANSFORMATIVE… and aren't you glad you struggle as an artist? Prince proves that art is conceived in the mind, not in the hand, the eye, or the shutter finger.
ADDENDUM: Received a request from Artsy to add a link to my post on Richard Prince to their Prince page which I am glad to do.
https://www.artsy.net/artist/richard-prince
ADDENDUM: Received a request from Artsy to add a link to my post on Richard Prince to their Prince page which I am glad to do.
https://www.artsy.net/artist/richard-prince
Gary, excellent article. Once again this got me to wondering about images I have taken of other artists work, most typically in part, not in whole. The one that comes to mind for me is the image I took at Via Colori several years ago. The original piece of work was unfinished but a portion of the work was not. It was of a female with wide open eyes and hands up as if pulling out her hair. I focused in on only this aspect. I have rendered it as both color and black and white (I prefer the BW). I don't know who the original artist is. My question is this. Is this plagarism? Have I absconded with the artists work claiming it to be my own? I have entered this image in a number of contests where there were professional judges and the first comment they make is, "the photographer has taken an image of someone else's work". This leads me to believe that they think that I have stolen something and am portraying it as mine. I don't wish to steal the work of others but if I take an image that says something different out of context of the original I feel justified in doing what I do. That I believe is my best and only defense.
ReplyDeleteGary, excellent article. Once again this got me to wondering about images I have taken of other artists work, most typically in part, not in whole. The one that comes to mind for me is the image I took at Via Colori several years ago. The original piece of work was unfinished but a portion of the work was not. It was of a female with wide open eyes and hands up as if pulling out her hair. I focused in on only this aspect. I have rendered it as both color and black and white (I prefer the BW). I don't know who the original artist is. My question is this. Is this plagarism? Have I absconded with the artists work claiming it to be my own? I have entered this image in a number of contests where there were professional judges and the first comment they make is, "the photographer has taken an image of someone else's work". This leads me to believe that they think that I have stolen something and am portraying it as mine. I don't wish to steal the work of others but if I take an image that says something different out of context of the original I feel justified in doing what I do. That I believe is my best and only defense.
ReplyDelete