Untitled (Fireman joke)

“…with his repertoire of found jokes, Prince is not appropriating a particular cultural ethos, but rather keying into an antiheroic mentality that suits the overall tenor of his practice….By separating a cartoon from its caption and adding a non sequitur of a joke, Prince creates strange, hybrid emblems that offer mutable narratives….Through this deliberate confusion of discursive systems, Prince brings to the surface the hostility, fear and shame fueling much American humor.” (N. Spector, “Nowhere Man,” Richard Prince: Spiritual America, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2007, p. 37).