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Richard Prince appropriates foreign imagery by citing, photographing or painting over it. His artworks give these foreign worlds a new context. The exhibition in Sammlung Goetz presented an overview of the American artist's oeuvre with over 50 artworks from nearly all phases.
Born in 1949, Richard Prince now works in New York. He developed his characteristic style in the 1970s. Working at a temporary job in an image archive, he photographed the images in advertisements. He then created series of these images, all with the same motive, such as the pairs in Untitled (couple) (1977).
His best known work group, which is also his 'trademark', is Untitled Cowboys from the Marlboro campaign, which has developed from 1980 on.
In circa 1984, Prince began to group photos in 'gangs', such as in Criminals and Celebrities (1986) or Creative Evolution (1984/85). The visual appearance of these can be compared to a highly enlarged contact print from a photo lab. In addition, he deals with the rites of the biker scene. In his series Girlfriends, he uses private photos from biker magazines, in which half-naked girls have suggestively draped themselves over motorcycles.
Prince's Joke-Paintings, which he has created since the mid-1980s, form a large work complex in the Sammlung Goetz holdings. They are based on jokes that the artist finds in magazines and newspapers. In the beginning, he writes them by hand on small pieces of paper. Later, he transfers the texts and cartoons onto huge canvases. The pretty nurses in the Nurse Paintings, such as Aloha Nurse and Surgical Nurse from 2002 are motifs that signify longing and are derived from cheap novels of the 1950s.
168 pages, 100 ill., hardcover
German/English
2004, Kunstverlag Ingvild Goetz GmbH, Hamburg
ISBN 3-9808063-4-0
€ 15,00
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