|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In 1977 Richard Prince (b. 1949, Panama Canal Zone) lined up four advertisements for home furnishings torn from the New York Times Magazine, rephotographed them, framed them, and presented them as an original artwork. This iconoclastic gesture was not only a decisive breakthrough in the artist’s own practice, but also a cornerstone of postmodernism’s assault on conventional notions of authorship and originality. During the subsequent decade, Prince continued to scour the pages of the consumer press for images of fashion models, popular brands, and luxury goods, from which he cropped out all text and logos to reveal a series of highly systematic visual tropes. Stripped of their commercial function, the images assume an uncanny quality, described by the artist in a 1987 interview as “alien-looking, and at the same time so familiar they seem to have the possibility of being believed.” In the triptych Untitled (jewels, watch and pocketbook) (1978–79), an assortment of high-end accessories are bathed in a beatific golden light and positioned against a background of foliage—an attempt to invoke the natural world that only highlights the bizarre artifice of this carefully orchestrated act of seduction. —Katherine Brinson |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
