24 Richard Prince What Can You Do? 2001 acrylic on canvas 190.5 x 294.6 cm (75 x 115 7/8 in) Signed, titled and dated 'R. Prince 2001 What Can You Do?' on the overlap.
Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York Exhibited The University of Chicago, The Renaissance Society, Watery, Domestic, 17 November - 22 December 2002 Catalogue Essay Painted in 2001, What Can You Do? is a largescale joke painting rendered on a smooth, powdery surface. Combining different modern traditions and techniques, such as silk-screening processes and monochrome canvases, Richard Prince’s jokes stand in between the comical and disbelief, continually questioning definitions of art and of authorship. The pastel hues employed in the present lot shy away from Prince’s more stark, monochromatic paintings from earlier in his career. Yet, this time, the artist seems to have chosen this yellowish background in accordance with the joke based on colour-matching humour. The joke itself is stencilled in black in a narrow band across the width of the canvas. The strong design of the work, in its symmetry and the detailed composition, echo Barnett Newman’s zip paintings. Richard Prince’s first joke paintings date back to the mid 1980s when, after having posted up a small handwritten joke on a piece of paper, he started imagining how it would have looked on a gallery wall. At first handwritten, his jokes developed in time into more substantial works in which the same joke is repeated on monochrome canvases of different colours. Prince is part of the Pictures Generation – alongside Cindy Sherman Robert Longo David Salle Barbara Kruger and Sherrie Levine – who came to prominence in the 1970s and were known for their appropriation of images drawn from the mass media. Just as his earlier Cowboys and Nurse Paintings series, Prince’s jokes are therefore a further ‘variation’ on this method. “I have never thought making anything new. I make it again. I am very much against trying to make anything new in a modernist approach. I think you can do only something for yourself.” (Richard Prince in Vincent Pécoil, ‘Richard Prince, Writer’, in Richard Prince Canaries in the Coal Mine, exh. cat, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 2006, p.128) The true meaning of the joke paintings is still a matter of discussion. From a distance, they could even be read as abstract works. But viewed closely, their formal simplicity and their repetition seem to set them in the tradition of conceptualism. All in all, Prince’s works are loaded with references to Structuralism and Post-modernist theories. Repetition deprives the joke of its humour thus reducing it to a mere text in which the signifier takes over on the signified. After this, what is left? Read More Artist Bio Richard Prince American • 1947 While some artists are known for a signature style, Richard Prince is most closely associated with his subject matter: for instance, Cowboys, his series of the Marlboro man magnified between 1980 and 1994; Nurses, sinister yet seductive, all copies from pulp novel covers; joke text paintings, simple block lettering of his own or appropriated jokes. Often labelled an artist of the Pictures Generation alongside Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo Prince has been said to be the contemporary artist who most understands the depth and influence of mass media over life in the 20th and 21st centuries. In whichever medium Prince chooses to work, he stays within the realm of appropriation. Of course Prince is not met without controversy, and he has been on the losing end of several lawsuits involving copyright infringement. His "Instagram" series — unedited reproductions of content posted by models, influencers and celebrities on their personal feeds — sold for upwards of $100,000 at primary market, making for a memorable moment at Frieze Week New York in 2015. View More Works
24 Richard Prince What Can You Do? 2001 acrylic on canvas 190.5 x 294.6 cm (75 x 115 7/8 in) Signed, titled and dated 'R. Prince 2001 What Can You Do?' on the overlap.
Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York Exhibited The University of Chicago, The Renaissance Society, Watery, Domestic, 17 November - 22 December 2002 Catalogue Essay Painted in 2001, What Can You Do? is a largescale joke painting rendered on a smooth, powdery surface. Combining different modern traditions and techniques, such as silk-screening processes and monochrome canvases, Richard Prince’s jokes stand in between the comical and disbelief, continually questioning definitions of art and of authorship. The pastel hues employed in the present lot shy away from Prince’s more stark, monochromatic paintings from earlier in his career. Yet, this time, the artist seems to have chosen this yellowish background in accordance with the joke based on colour-matching humour. The joke itself is stencilled in black in a narrow band across the width of the canvas. The strong design of the work, in its symmetry and the detailed composition, echo Barnett Newman’s zip paintings. Richard Prince’s first joke paintings date back to the mid 1980s when, after having posted up a small handwritten joke on a piece of paper, he started imagining how it would have looked on a gallery wall. At first handwritten, his jokes developed in time into more substantial works in which the same joke is repeated on monochrome canvases of different colours. Prince is part of the Pictures Generation – alongside Cindy Sherman Robert Longo David Salle Barbara Kruger and Sherrie Levine – who came to prominence in the 1970s and were known for their appropriation of images drawn from the mass media. Just as his earlier Cowboys and Nurse Paintings series, Prince’s jokes are therefore a further ‘variation’ on this method. “I have never thought making anything new. I make it again. I am very much against trying to make anything new in a modernist approach. I think you can do only something for yourself.” (Richard Prince in Vincent Pécoil, ‘Richard Prince, Writer’, in Richard Prince Canaries in the Coal Mine, exh. cat, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 2006, p.128) The true meaning of the joke paintings is still a matter of discussion. From a distance, they could even be read as abstract works. But viewed closely, their formal simplicity and their repetition seem to set them in the tradition of conceptualism. All in all, Prince’s works are loaded with references to Structuralism and Post-modernist theories. Repetition deprives the joke of its humour thus reducing it to a mere text in which the signifier takes over on the signified. After this, what is left? Read More Artist Bio Richard Prince American • 1947 While some artists are known for a signature style, Richard Prince is most closely associated with his subject matter: for instance, Cowboys, his series of the Marlboro man magnified between 1980 and 1994; Nurses, sinister yet seductive, all copies from pulp novel covers; joke text paintings, simple block lettering of his own or appropriated jokes. Often labelled an artist of the Pictures Generation alongside Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo Prince has been said to be the contemporary artist who most understands the depth and influence of mass media over life in the 20th and 21st centuries. In whichever medium Prince chooses to work, he stays within the realm of appropriation. Of course Prince is not met without controversy, and he has been on the losing end of several lawsuits involving copyright infringement. His "Instagram" series — unedited reproductions of content posted by models, influencers and celebrities on their personal feeds — sold for upwards of $100,000 at primary market, making for a memorable moment at Frieze Week New York in 2015. View More Works
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