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Lot Essay
"Normalcy as special effect' is how Richard Prince described his series of 'Cowboy' works which he began in 1980 and continued throughout the decade. Rephotographed images of cigarette adverts, Prince's Cowboy series explores the myth of the "Marlboro Man" at the very point in history when the cigarette company itself had been forced to abandon him as a viable image for their product.
Using the very same images as those used in the advertisements, but devoid of the texts, these memorable images of the Cowboy - a fictitious but instantly recogniseable cultural icon - challenge the viewer's attitudes to both the media and to one of America's favourite images of itself. In particular, what clearly interested Prince in the making of this important series of works is the fact that the Cowboy - that lone self-reliant hero of the West - had now become a taboo image, because of his association with the tobacco industry. By appropriating the imagery, removing the offending text, and returning the image to the environment of the art gallery, Prince reclaims the archetype while at the same time throwing it open to question and re-evaluation.
In doing so, Prince also reveals how the landscape of our modern lives is window-dressed with such artifice and exposes the shallowness much of the imagery and ideology around us. Not only is the language of advertising a language of manipulative lies, Prince shows us, but so are the collective dreams and ideals to which it appeals. In revealing the artifice of our modern culture in such a direct way, appropriating its imagery and deconstructing its language by using its own tools against it so to speak, Prince also opens art and its practice to the same arena of inspection and doubt.
Using the very same images as those used in the advertisements, but devoid of the texts, these memorable images of the Cowboy - a fictitious but instantly recogniseable cultural icon - challenge the viewer's attitudes to both the media and to one of America's favourite images of itself. In particular, what clearly interested Prince in the making of this important series of works is the fact that the Cowboy - that lone self-reliant hero of the West - had now become a taboo image, because of his association with the tobacco industry. By appropriating the imagery, removing the offending text, and returning the image to the environment of the art gallery, Prince reclaims the archetype while at the same time throwing it open to question and re-evaluation.
In doing so, Prince also reveals how the landscape of our modern lives is window-dressed with such artifice and exposes the shallowness much of the imagery and ideology around us. Not only is the language of advertising a language of manipulative lies, Prince shows us, but so are the collective dreams and ideals to which it appeals. In revealing the artifice of our modern culture in such a direct way, appropriating its imagery and deconstructing its language by using its own tools against it so to speak, Prince also opens art and its practice to the same arena of inspection and doubt.