Richard Prince Response

I found the New York Times article on the artistic appropriation of advertising images by Richard Prince to be a interesting look at the issue of authorship in photography. In particular, the first-hand account from advertising photographer Jim Krantz brought the issue of Prince’s practice to a very personal level.

Being an artist myself, the idea of someone like Prince preying on the images of other artists is slightly upsetting. However, I feel that Richard Prince is not entirely in the wrong for his approach. While is artistic practice is almost entirely reliant on appropriation, there is an art-historical precedent for appropriation. While Marcel Duchamp is the most notable example for his appropriation of physical objects, other artists such as Roy Lichtenstein also base much of their practice on appropriated imagery without attribution. I feel that it is important to recognize and keep in mind the context and intention of the original imagery before jumping to immediate conclusions about the ethics of artists like Richard Prince. I feel that is juvenile to assume that Prince is stealing images simply for the sake of stealing them. Rather, I feel that he is investigating the indexical nature of photography. As participants in mass-media culture we are confronted with advertising images every day of our lives. By decontextualizing these images, Prince is commenting on contemporary visual culture. I don’t feel that Prince is wrong for putting a Marlboro or similar advertisement into an exhibition space because the context and intentions are entirely different. Price is not looking to sell Marlboro cigarettes, he is just looking. And what he see’s is advertising imagery. If the role of the artist is to be a translator of the visual world, how can we damn Richard Prince for showing us what he is seeing?

It is assumed that Price is not printing directly from the negative or digital file of the original photograph. He must, in someway, be recapturing the ad in some fashion whether through scanning or rephotographing. Although art has historically displayed the hand of the artist, there is no hard rule that it must be present. I found it especially interesting in the article when Mr. Krantz had to qualify his artistic integrity by stating that he had taken workshops with Ansel Adams and exhibited his own art photography. I don’t believe this has any relevance to Prince or to the issue at large. I don’t believe that Richard Prince is commenting on the artistic value of advertising imagery, he is simply commenting on its presence within our visual culture.