Beschreibung:

Richard Prince Untitled (cowboy) 1986 Ektacolor photograph image 28 x 40 in. (71.1 x 101.6 cm) sheet 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm) Signed, numbered and dated "Prince 1986 ap" lower right. This work is an artist’s proof from an edition of 2 plus 1 artist’s proof.
Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York Private Collection London, Phillips de Pury & Company, Contemporary Art Evening Sale, June 28, 2012, lot 6 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Richard Prince May 1 – July 12, 1992, then traveled to Düsseldorf, Kunstverein (December 4 1992 – January 20, 1993), San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (April 29 – July 25, 1993), Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen (October 3 – November 27, 1993) (another example exhibited) Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Richard Prince Photographs, December 8, 2001 – February, 24 2002 (variant) Literature L. Phillips, Richard Prince New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1992, p. 189, p. 99 (illustrated) Richard Prince Photographs, exh. cat., Zurich: Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel, 2002, p.74 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay Throughout his career artist Richard Prince has constantly called into question the notion of appropriation and authorship. Inspired by his early exposure to advertisement as an article clipper at Time-Life Inc., Prince recalls his 1970’s day job: “I was in the tear-sheets department. At the end of the day, all I was left with was the advertising images, and it became my subject. Pens, watches, models—it wasn’t your typical subject matter for art. (Richard Prince in K. Rosenberg, “Artist: Richard Prince ” New York Magazine, 2005) What seemed to Prince at the time as divergent artistic material, would later in fact serve as his lifelong inspiration. Culling his imagery from sleek and glossy advertisements promoting luxury good as seen on alluring female models, Prince strove to make these photographs his own by simply detracting their advertising slogans and toying with the image either by expanding, blurring or cropping the photograph. Prince explains that “The pictures I went after, ‘stole,’ were too good to be true. They were about wishful thinking, public pictures that happen to appear in the advertising sections of mass market magazines, pictures not associated with an author it was their look I was interested in. I wanted to re¬present the closest thing to the real thing.” (Richard Prince in “Spiritual America: No Holds Barred,” Richard Prince exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 1992, p. 85) The present lot, Untitled (cowboy), 1986, is an exemplary work from his infamous cowboy series which first took form in 1981. Prince chose the rugged and handsome cowboy depicted in the Marlboro cigarette ads as his cultural protagonist. Prince explains “I started taking pictures of the cowboys. You don’t see them out in public anymore—you can’t ride down a highway and see them on a billboard. But at Time-Life, I was working with seven or eight magazines, and Marlboro had ads in almost all of them.” (Richard Prince in K. Rosenberg, “Artist: Richard Prince New York Magazine, 2005) The cowboy, a slightly mythic figure—one belonging to fantasy more than reality—had a cultural resurgence in the form of the “Marlboro man,” the cigarette ads in which this hero was seen had become widely recognizable with inviting slogans like “Come to where the flavor is …. Come to Marlboro Country.” The ads did not sell the consumer a product but an associated lifestyle of grandiose independence; the cowboy, with his charming weather-beaten physique, takes root in the historical days of the Wild West. "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. He is simultaneously the wanderer and the mythological symbol of social mobility. Even today, the image of the cowboy has not lost its luster. (R. Brooks, "Spiritual America: No Holds Barred," exh. cat. Richard Prince 1992, p. 95) The pre