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Lot Essay
Created in 1983-1984, Untitled (Fashion) is an elegant re-photograph by pioneering appropriation artist, Richard Prince. Reminiscent of Man Ray's classic, black and white photography of the 1930s, the image is derived from a contemporary 1980s advertisement in which a fashion model holds up a comb, ready to pass it through her hair. Liberated from all its contexts, cropped and stripped bare of its logos and branding, Untitled (Fashion) offers an intimate, if clinical close-up of the woman. Her classically beautiful proportions appear uncanny, seductively at odds with the commercial original. The contours of her lips, the veiled shadow cast over her eyes, the defined rise of her cheekbones, are all thrown into relief by the artist's use of chiaroscuro. Instead of black and white however, Prince's colour film gives the original monochrome source image a faint blush or sepia tint.
In Untitled (Fashion), Prince's strategy illuminates the tactics employed by advertising companies in the 1980s. In translating the commercial images to a new context: framing and exhibiting them like fineart paintings, he fundamentally questions the veneer of 'normalcy' presented to the public by the originals. As Hal Foster has so eloquently explained, Prince wants to 'catch seduction in the act, to savour his own fascination with such images even as they manipulate him via insinuated desire' (H. Foster, 'The Expressive Fallacy (1983)' quoted in L. Philips (ed.), Richard Prince, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1992, p. 31).
In Untitled (Fashion), Prince's strategy illuminates the tactics employed by advertising companies in the 1980s. In translating the commercial images to a new context: framing and exhibiting them like fineart paintings, he fundamentally questions the veneer of 'normalcy' presented to the public by the originals. As Hal Foster has so eloquently explained, Prince wants to 'catch seduction in the act, to savour his own fascination with such images even as they manipulate him via insinuated desire' (H. Foster, 'The Expressive Fallacy (1983)' quoted in L. Philips (ed.), Richard Prince, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1992, p. 31).