reviews bookS
If Richard Prince has enjoyed a cult reputation
spanning three decades, his academic significance
has been largely tied to his textbook po-mo
appropriation strategies, particularly the iconic
While New York’s intellectual climate,
Marlboro Man cowboys that have quickened
influenced by Roland Barthes and the new
the pulse of many a feminist. This catalogue,
critique of the mechanisms of representation,
accompanying Prince’s Guggenheim-initiated
created the conditions for Prince’s first
midcareer retrospective, seeks canonisation of
appropriation of a New York Times Magazine
the artist’s heterogeneous oeuvre. Thematically
furniture ad in 1977, Spector argues that the
rather than chronologically classified, the
birth of feminist film theory, with its ‘profound
reproduced artworks include not just the
suspicion of visual pleasure’, proved serious bad
infamous rephotography and joke paintings that
timing. Indeed Spector frequently drops her
have become auction-house easy-sellers, but
academic guard for anti-puritanical libertarianism
also the muscle-car hood sculptures, pulp-fiction
as she applauds Prince’s provocations, insisting,
nurses, collections of artist books and publicity
for example, on the self-consciously homoerotic
photographs, and more recently, his de Kooning-
allusions of his Cowboys (1980–6). Only now,
style paintings.
she suggests, are we ready to appreciate the
Peppered throughout are photos of his
biting political significance of Prince’s most
lesser-known, self-curated activities, mostly
notorious manoeuvre, the re-presentation of a
based around his hometown of Rensselaerville, an
photograph of a naked, underage Brooke Shields,
‘anti-Marfa’ three hours upstate from Manhattan:
Spiritual America (1983) – also the subtitle of this
his First and Second Houses, the Library, R’Ville
retrospective.
Books and the Body Shop. It is these more-
The most illuminating section comprises
private laboratories that continually remix
20 interviews by Glenn O’Brien, former editor
the dynamic between Prince’s own disparate
for Warhol’s Interview magazine. Purporting
projects, his various collections and his obsession
to speak ‘around’ rather than about Prince, the
with customising car hoods, which, according to
interviewees are all experts in the subcultures
Jack Bankowsky’s essay, provide the performative
that make up the Princean universe – comedy,
missing link between Prince’s works and an ever-
muscle cars, Hell’s Angels, porn, rare books, pulp
evolving portrait of the artist himself.
fiction. These anecdotes and trivia range from
Guggenheim chief curator Nancy
the pulp-fiction writers who could write 20,000
Spector packs in all the serious contextualisation
words a week on top of a 9-to-5 job, to songwriter
in her well-researched essay ‘Nowhere Man’.
Ned Sublette’s underground hit Cowboys Are
She logs Prince’s experiments in posturing that
Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other (1981) –
have contributed to the mystery surrounding
confirming, in the process, Spector’s earlier point
his artistic origins: his shortlived alter ego John
about their gay appeal – to veteran comedians’
Dogg; the fake autobiographical interview with
deconstruction of a joke’s ‘get-it’ moment. This
J.G. Ballard, published in 1985 but backdated
seductive immersion into the otherwise closed
to 1967; and the poster of a macho Franz Kline
worlds of American mythology parallels the
staring out of his studio window that allegedly
tenuous distance that separates Prince-as-fan
inspired Prince to move to New York and seek
from Prince-as-artist, and increasingly celebrity
his artistic fortune in 1973.
subject and celebrity artist. It takes Bankowsky’s
final essay to declare what we knew was coming
all along: Richard Prince is the rightful heir to
Warhol. Jennifer Thatcher
RIChARd PRINCE
Edited by Nancy Spector
Guggenheim Museum Publications, $60/£35 (hardcover)
Artreview 148
DEC_books 2-4indd.indd 148 5/11/07 09:21:20
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