Beschreibung:

RICHARD PRINCE (B. 1949)Untitled (Mumbai After Dark) 2009 signed and dated 2009 on the overlap ink jet and acrylic on canvas 59 by 74 in. 149.9 by 188 cm. FootnotesProvenance Gagosian Gallery, New York Acquired directly from the above by the present owner Richard Prince has redefined the New York Avant-Garde since the earliest days of his practice nearly forty years ago. Whilst he is popularly considered an enfant terrible who has consistently shunned artistic convention, adopting aliases and appropriating material from various genres, his work has offered some of the most intensely contemporary and culturally engaged criticism alongside his colleagues who form the core of The Pictures Generation, including Barbara Kruger Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine Presented here is a work from Prince's celebrated After Dark series. Based on a series of mid-century pulp fiction paperbacks of the same name, the artist has taken the imagery and stylistic cues of the collection's covers as his source material, posing as both author and artist, refashioning the surface with flourishes of Abstract Expressionist swathes of paint. This small series of canvases encompasses major global cities, each uniquely composed with images and fonts that appear to nod to their respective locations. The affiliations embedded in Prince's chosen titles produce a mystery and exoticism that is concurrent with the artist's practice at large, posing more questions than answers, and probing the relationship between the mediated image and the spectator. Novellas and popular literature have been pivotal and characteristic of much of Prince's artistic production, providing a narrative vehicle that he has transformed into poster-size depictions that capture a male fantastical gaze. From his de Kooning paintings to his Nurse canvases and the After Dark series, the female subject has been at the center of Prince's work. In doing so, he imparts a male authorial presence and a specifically American culture of fetishization under the surface of the painting. The present work evokes this with masterful subtlety – a sense of lavish intrigue and suspense that belies the more rigorous intonations as a work by Prince. In Mumbai After Dark (2009), there are several nods to the artist's life and practice beyond the series. One of Prince's most famed pseudonyms emerges through the painterly haze in the lower right corner, 'Fulton Ryder': the name similarly given to a secretive bookstore on New York's Upper East Side that the artist operated and published out of until its closure in 2014. In the same vein, the publisher of this After Dark tome is recorded as Panama Books, Prince notably being born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1949. As a bibliophile and one of the most lauded artists to employ appropriation as his creative method, Mumbai After Dark is a superb example of Richard Prince's painting that has defined a generation of neo-conceptual, post-Pop artists. Ascending to be one of the most major and contentious artistic figures at the turn of the millennia, his legacy is extensive and without question, being included in major global institutions that include the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Norway; the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Tate Collection, UK. This represents an opportunity to acquire an exceptional piece from a rare series by Prince.