“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.”
This triptych of Ektacolor photographs by Richard Prince presents rephotographed advertising imagery—pens, watches, and models—stripped of their original commercial context and reframed as fine art. Working from his experience in the tear-sheets department of a magazine, Prince appropriated the seductive visual language of consumer culture, challenging traditional notions of authorship and originality. The work stands as a foundational example of Pictures Generation appropriation art, interrogating the boundary between advertising and artistic subject matter.
- Medium
- Ektacolor photograph, triptych
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale
March 7, 2013
More by Richard Prince
Artists in conversation
Sherrie Levine
American · b. 1947
Levine is a central figure of the Pictures Generation who, like Prince, directly appropriated existing images to challenge authorship and originality, rephotographing canonical works and consumer imagery to interrogate who owns a picture and what authenticity means in a media saturated culture.
Barbara Kruger
American · b. 1945
Drawing from her own background in magazine design, Kruger appropriates the seductive visual language of advertising photography and mass media to expose how consumer culture constructs desire and identity, sharing Prince's critical engagement with commercial imagery as fine art subject matter.
Cindy Sherman
American · b. 1954
Sherman's photographic practice deconstructs the fabricated female archetypes found in advertising and mass media imagery, engaging the same commercial visual codes and constructed models of femininity that Prince found in magazine tear sheets and reframed as conceptual art.
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