The Provocateur

Richard Prince has one of the most recognizable names in art. But a quick read of his rather colorful biography brings to mind one of his monochromatic canvases featuring a classic borscht belt joke direct from the Catskills: “I never had a penny to my name, so I changed my name.” Considering the artist’s flirtations with fiction (both personal and artistic) and his embrace of humor, that’s as good an entry point to Prince and his work as any.

Spiritual America, a show organized by Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector, brings together nearly 100 pieces—sculpture, painting, photographs, and drawings—covering this enigmatic artist’s thirty-year career. The show opened at the Walker Art Center March 22 and, according to the Walker’s chief curator, Philippe Vergne, includes a surprise—the premiere of a new sculpture completed in January.

Prince first gained art-world notoriety (and an aura of infamy) in the late 1970s for photographing advertisements, carefully cropping out the words, and presenting the images as his own. His co-opting of the iconic Marlboro cowboy is among the most recognizable examples. In the process, Prince introduced a new era, which, as Spector says in her introduction to the catalog for the show, “questioned notions of originality and the privileged status of the unique aesthetic object.”

In other words, Prince made a lot of people angry, particularly the people who created the ads in the first place. But he didn’t just steal images and reprint them; rather, he reinvented the images as a visual portal straight to our collective heart of darkness. Spector describes the slightly off-kilter quality of Prince’s “appropriated photos” as utterly familiar and eerily strange. “He takes what we already know—commercial advertising, snapshots of girlfriends, one-liners, celebrity headshots, pulp-fiction covers—and gives it back relatively unaltered, but forever changed.”

The title for the show refers to one of the most famous and controversial examples of this approach: Prince’s photo of a suggestively posed, ten-year-old Brooke Shields, nude. Prince appropriated not only the image, but also the title from an Alfred Stieglitz photo of the hindquarters of a workhorse. It’s a perfect example of the artist’s knack for synthesizing historical and pop-culture references into clever visual commentaries.
Whether it’s vulgar retreads of de Kooning, careful copies of literary cartoons with a twist, or sculptural renderings of muscle-car hoods,
Prince’s work addresses what Vergne calls the “dark fascination of the culture,” particularly consumerism. “There is, through his work, a very interesting way to look at American culture right now,” Vergne says, noting that nothing Prince does is gratuitous—everything refers back to the American psyche and history.

Prince’s work pops up at the Walker Art Center fairly regularly, and the institution already has a solid collection. But the range of Prince’s career is vast, and Spiritual America is the first show to bring it all together in a cohesive artistic narrative. “When you see it all together, you realize there’s a whole body of work there,” says Vergne. “It’s highly, highly classical—very elegant, beautiful. For some people, that’s a surprise.”

Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., 612-375-7600