Richard Prince

Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York

This work is in excellent condition overall. The print is window matted and mounted to the backing board. The print is trimmed to the image. Under raking light there are no visible surface scratches. Upon close inspection, there are some very minor undulations along the extreme right edge of the print, not visible when matted. Framed under Plexiglas.
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Richard Prince’s iconic Cowboy Series, conceived in the early 1980s, initiated a new subversive and postmodern approach to the production of art.  By appropriating and re-contextualizing the alluring images found in vintage Marlboro cigarette advertisements, Prince questions the concepts of authorship and originality traditionally tied to unique works of art. Untitled (Cowboy) from 2003 is a prime example of Prince’s ground-breaking appropriationist technique and his persistent engagement with mass consumer culture.

In 1974 Prince was working the nightshift for Time-Life magazines and clipping editorials to assist the staff writers’ research. He found himself drawn to the leftover advertisements and the familiarity of their imagery which we often take for granted. He began re-photographing the found advertisements through his own inquisitorial lens and removing tag lines and slogans so only the aesthetic splendor of the images remained. Prince’s engagement with advertising and consumer culture was symptomatic of a larger art world trend, embodied by the ‘New Image’ movement of which he was a part. Emerging out of New York City in the late 1970s, New Image art embraced and cultivated a revitalized cultural unity between mass media and fine art. Among his contemporaries in what is now known as the Pictures Generation – Cindy Sherman, Richard Longo, Jack Goldstein and Sherrie Levine – Prince was and continues to be the most engaged with the power of advertisement.

The Marlboro cowboys have been the most persistent source of inspiration throughout Prince’s remarkably varied artistic output. As the quintessential American folk hero and the premier icon of American identity, the universality of the cowboy makes him the perfect vehicle for Prince’s oppositional photographic practice. In Untitled (Cowboy), Prince has cropped the image to entirely isolate the protagonist in the expansive American plains. His silhouette is defined by the warm sunlight streaking across the sparse terrain. His body’s upward thrust and the lasso winding in the arid soil enliven the majestic landscape. We are seduced by the seeming simplicity of the composition and the sense of masculinity and perseverance evoked by the lone cowboy’s solitude. It is an image steeped in the historical conscious of America and notions of the American dream. 

While no longer associated with the Marlboro advertisement from which it came, the present work remains an image originally conceived to implicitly connect with its audience and communicate a message. The potency of Untitled (Cowboy) rests in Prince’s ability to undermine the sincerity and contrived familiarity of the source image. He exposes the fantasy of the lone ranger and scrutinizes the shallowness of the ideals to which advertising appeals. As explained by Rosetta Brooks: “By rephotographing commercial images that were clearly made-up fictions for selling products to the public, Prince, acting as fine artist, makes originals that are more authentic than the originals. He takes control of an already controlling (deliberately manipulative) image…”(Rosetta Brooks, ‘A Prince of Light or Darkness’ in: Rosetta Brooks, Jeff Rian, Luc Sante, eds., Richard Prince, London 2003, p. 38).