Richard Prince
USA- Biography of Richard Prince
- Early Life and Education
- Artistic Career
- Influence of Beat Culture
- Rephotography and Copyright Controversy
Biography of Richard Prince
Richard Prince is an American artist and photographer who gained fame for his "rephotographs" - artistic images of existing photographs. One of his rephotographs, "Untitled (Cowboy)", sold for over $1 million at a Christie's auction in New York in 2005.
Early Life and Education
Prince was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was under the control of the American government at the time. His parents likely worked for the American government. Later, his family moved to Braintree, Massachusetts. Prince became interested in art, particularly the works of renowned American expressionist Jackson Pollock, during Pollock's peak years of success. He would familiarize himself with Pollock's new works as they were released during his formative years.
After graduating from high school in 1967, Prince traveled around Europe before enrolling in college in Maine. He later moved to New York City, where he actively pursued his artistic career.
Artistic Career
Prince's first solo exhibition took place in June 1980 in Buffalo, New York. In late 2007, a retrospective exhibition of Prince's work was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where numerous pieces were displayed in chronological order on ascending spiral walls. The exhibition later moved to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Influence of Beat Culture
Richard Prince is a great admirer of Beat culture and has amassed a significant collection of books and documents dedicated to this movement. His collection includes several copies of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," one of which bears a dedication to the author's mother, while another previously belonged to Neal Cassady and contains many of his notes.
Rephotography and Copyright Controversy
Richard Prince is not the only photographer who actively used other people's photographs as "models." Rephotography was quite popular in the late 1970s. Prince began working with other people's photos while working at Time magazine. At the end of each day, he would be left alone with scraps of advertising pages from Time's subsidiary projects, and these became his first rephotographs. At that time, Prince was still not proficient in photography but quickly learned. He admitted that the main challenge for him was choosing a subject. Rephotography proved to be a captivating activity, as Prince's camera seemed to uncover a new layer of meaning in someone else's work, giving it a new significance.
In December 2008, photographer Patrick Cariou filed a lawsuit against Richard Prince, the Gagosian Gallery, Lawrence Gagosian, and Rizzoli International Publications. It turned out that the gallery exhibited a new selection of Prince's works, in which he "rephotographed" 35 of Cariou's works and used themes from Cariou's photographs in at least 28 other paintings. In some of the images, the original works underwent minimal changes, which allowed Cariou to accuse Prince and the gallery of infringing his copyrights. The legal process is ongoing, and initially, the court ruled in favor of Cariou. However, the case was later reviewed, and it was determined that the changes made in 25 of the disputed works were sufficient to consider them new creations.
