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Richard PrinceA-Bomb1989
1989
$5,250
£4,075.26
€4,622.63
CA$7,496.16
A$8,260.17
CHF 4,284.41
MX$98,243.58
NOK 54,196.59
SEK 50,770.71
DKK 34,524.09
About the Item
Richard Prince (b. 1949) is one of the most innovative, influential and polemic American artists. Whether you associate him with The Pictures Generation, post-modernism or Appropriation Art, his contribution (and subversive humor) is undeniable. He lives and works in upstate New York.
Prince has worked in a variety of formats over the course of his career, yet each of his iconic and provocative series shares a similar approach: Prince’s jokes tap into social preoccupations of the national subconscious. At his best, he extracts elements from the American vernacular culture and positions it in a way similar to Duchamp's urinal.
Prince started to work with jokes in 1986. These works were a bold contradiction to the reigning hierarchies in the art world perpetuated by Minimalism or Neo-Expressionist painting.
This early example from 1989 features a joke handwritten by the artist. The simple joke seems to concern his sexual frustrations and is relying on a punch line: "You know I just don't have the incentive to buy a two pants suit".
The simple, or anti-aesthetic seems to be simultaneously parodying tropes established by Conceptual and Minimalist artists of the previous decade.
Note: the artwork was included in a limited edition book, "Inside World", that coincided with an exhibition of Prince's work at the Kent Gallery.
Questions about this piece? Contact us. Visit our Toronto gallery on Thursdays or by appointment.
"Bomb Joke", 1989
Ink on paper (handwritten multiple)
Signed by the artist
12"H 8"W (work)
Very good condition
Detailed condition report by request
Literature: Jonathan Lethem, Richard Prince: Collected Writings, 2011.
Provenance: Pat Hearn Gallery, NYC
- Creator:Richard Prince (1949, American)
- Creation Year:1989
- Dimensions:Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Width: 8 in (20.32 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Very good condition Detailed condition report by request.
- Gallery Location:Toronto, CA
- Reference Number:Seller: 08-231stDibs: LU215212945532
Richard Prince
Richard Prince (American, b.1949) is a painter and photographer, best known as a pioneer of Appropriation Art. Born in the Panama Canal Zone, Prince grew up in Massachusetts and moved to New York in 1977, where he prepared magazine clippings for Time-Life, spurring his interest in advertising and consumer imagery. He began creating works based on various pop culture images taken from magazines and newspapers, often re-photographing and manipulating the images in his own works. Considered by many the father of Appropriation Art, the majority of his works includes scandalous subject matter and has provoked controversy around issues of copyright in the art world. His famous Cowboys series of 1980s photographs, for example, was taken from Marlboro ad campaigns. In the mid-1980s, Prince shifted his interest from images to text, evident in his Jokes series, displaying appropriated jokes in ironic works. From his home in Upstate New York, Prince created his late Nurse Paintings series, inspired by pulp romance novels, as well as his own photographs of everyday rural and suburban life. He acquired an abandoned farmhouse near his home in 2001, which he turned into an installation site he called Second House, installing the interior with his sculptures, paintings, and his own books; the structure has been purchased by the Guggenheim Museum in New York, but was struck by lightning and destroyed in 2007. In the fall of that year, Prince’s work was the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Prince currently lives and works in Upstate New York.
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