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拍品專文
One of the most enduring motifs of his career, the cowboy has proven to be an endless fascination for Richard Prince. Evoking the bucolic splendor of the mythic American West, the cowboy represents rugged masculinity and fierce individualism, a subject the artist has explored for over forty years. In Untitled (Cowboy), Prince returns again to 1980s and ‘90s magazine advertisements for Marlboro cigarettes, leaving their torn edges and tape to expose the original context. In the present work, golden fields of wildflowers are ablaze with the blossoms of early summer, set against a jagged mountain range, where two mounted cowboys confront a wild horse. The tape running the centerfold highlights the origin of the image as a magazine centerfold. Executed in 2016, this work belongs to the artist’s more recent series of Cowboys, debuted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in late 2017. From a small edition of two—with the other example from the edition now in LACMA’s permanent collection—the present work brings the awe-inspiring magnificence of the American West directly under the artist’s skillful gaze, triggering a new and exciting interpretation of this classic American archetype.
Richard Prince came of age in the 1970s in New York, where he was working in the tear-sheet department of Time and Life magazines. His job was to clip articles for staff journalists, and in doing so, Prince came to scrutinize the magazine ads in a new light. Fascinated by these luxurious consumer goods, beautiful landscapes and shiny commodities, Prince began to re-photograph the original ads with a 35mm camera, making subtle changes to the imagery by cropping and eliminating the text, and then drastically enlarging its scale. Seen in a new light, these “appropriated” photographs sent shock waves through the art world when they were first exhibited in the early 1980s. Alongside artists like Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger, Prince became known as part of the “Pictures Generation,” which essentially revealed that our concept of identity and gender was essentially a false construct invented by the media.
Between 1980 and 1992, Prince used this strategy to interrogate the motif of the cowboy, which he found in advertisements for Marlboro cigarettes. These early cowboy photographs essentially set the stage for Prince’s life-long investigation of the motif and everything it conjures in the collective imagination—ruggedness, determination and individualism. Now more than ever, the myth of the cowboy continues to resonate with its complicated yet enduring appeal. As the art critic and curator Rosetta Brooks first observed in 1992, writing in Richard Prince’s retrospective catalogue at the Whitney, “The image of the cowboy is so familiar in American iconology that it has become almost invisible through its normality. And yet the cowboy is also the most sacred and masklike of cultural figures. In both a geographical and cultural sense, a cowboy is an image of endurance itself, a stereotypical symbol of American cinema. [...] Even today, the image of the cowboy has not lost its luster... of all of Prince’s art, the Cowboy works are Prince’s own mask—his self-portrait as a regular guy” (R. Brooks, “Spiritual America: No Holds Barred,” in L. Phillips, Richard Prince, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1992, p. 95).
Over the years, Richard Prince has returned to the Cowboy motif several times. In 2013, he traveled to iconic landscapes in the West, including Monument Valley, to photograph the landscape himself, which resulted in a series he called Untitled (Original Cowboy). Prior to that, Prince had appropriated the original magazine ads and then altered the image by changing its size, zooming in on certain features that changed the nature of the original image. Around 2015-16, Prince again returned to the 1980s and ‘90s Marlboro ads, but instead of photoshopping out the seam down the middle of the centerfold, he allowed that feature to remain. In the present work, the two tear sheets from the magazine have been torn out, then taped back together. This strong vertical element has the effect of dividing the composition into two parts, with the cowboys on one side, and a single wild horse on the other, symbolizing the difference between the raw, unbridled aspect of nature itself and man's attempt to contain it. The tape also reminds the viewer that this is still a ploy—an attempt to seduce its reader.
Richard Prince came of age in the 1970s in New York, where he was working in the tear-sheet department of Time and Life magazines. His job was to clip articles for staff journalists, and in doing so, Prince came to scrutinize the magazine ads in a new light. Fascinated by these luxurious consumer goods, beautiful landscapes and shiny commodities, Prince began to re-photograph the original ads with a 35mm camera, making subtle changes to the imagery by cropping and eliminating the text, and then drastically enlarging its scale. Seen in a new light, these “appropriated” photographs sent shock waves through the art world when they were first exhibited in the early 1980s. Alongside artists like Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger, Prince became known as part of the “Pictures Generation,” which essentially revealed that our concept of identity and gender was essentially a false construct invented by the media.
Between 1980 and 1992, Prince used this strategy to interrogate the motif of the cowboy, which he found in advertisements for Marlboro cigarettes. These early cowboy photographs essentially set the stage for Prince’s life-long investigation of the motif and everything it conjures in the collective imagination—ruggedness, determination and individualism. Now more than ever, the myth of the cowboy continues to resonate with its complicated yet enduring appeal. As the art critic and curator Rosetta Brooks first observed in 1992, writing in Richard Prince’s retrospective catalogue at the Whitney, “The image of the cowboy is so familiar in American iconology that it has become almost invisible through its normality. And yet the cowboy is also the most sacred and masklike of cultural figures. In both a geographical and cultural sense, a cowboy is an image of endurance itself, a stereotypical symbol of American cinema. [...] Even today, the image of the cowboy has not lost its luster... of all of Prince’s art, the Cowboy works are Prince’s own mask—his self-portrait as a regular guy” (R. Brooks, “Spiritual America: No Holds Barred,” in L. Phillips, Richard Prince, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1992, p. 95).
Over the years, Richard Prince has returned to the Cowboy motif several times. In 2013, he traveled to iconic landscapes in the West, including Monument Valley, to photograph the landscape himself, which resulted in a series he called Untitled (Original Cowboy). Prior to that, Prince had appropriated the original magazine ads and then altered the image by changing its size, zooming in on certain features that changed the nature of the original image. Around 2015-16, Prince again returned to the 1980s and ‘90s Marlboro ads, but instead of photoshopping out the seam down the middle of the centerfold, he allowed that feature to remain. In the present work, the two tear sheets from the magazine have been torn out, then taped back together. This strong vertical element has the effect of dividing the composition into two parts, with the cowboys on one side, and a single wild horse on the other, symbolizing the difference between the raw, unbridled aspect of nature itself and man's attempt to contain it. The tape also reminds the viewer that this is still a ploy—an attempt to seduce its reader.