Untitled [Four Works]

In 1993, a condemned home stood unassuming in West Hollywood, its date with a bulldozer rapidly approaching. Every corner of the ghostly venue was decorated with Prince’s artwork; there was a sculpture of junk food boxes in the kitchen, a painting screened directly onto the wall in the bedroom, and Jokes propped against walls in the living room and yard. This installation, titled First House, was a monumental development in Prince’s career. It fused themes he has explored throughout his oeuvre, chiefly his inclination to take ordinary objects, images, and experiences and force viewers to re-evaluate them. In First House, a decaying, cookie-cutter tract house was transformed—not just into a fine art gallery—but into a work of art itself.

Included in this important exhibition were the present works: four crude and macabre Jokes from his seminal series by the same name. Because the First House was demolished shortly after the show, these objects have become relics—the last traces of an ephemeral experience. Printed in a stark black Helvetica font against a white background, viewers must read the words and acknowledge the strange shift from the typical context one would encounter a joke of this caliber—through a microphone in a dimly-lit comedy bar, or from a parent around the dinner table. These works challenge expectations of what can be put on a canvas and classified as fine art. Nancy Spector called the Jokes “antimasterpieces” (N. Spector, Richard Prince, exh. cat. Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2007, p. 39). The transformation of a multi-sensory phenomenon into a 2-D object forces viewers to confront the words at face value.

Unlike the sleek silkscreens of his Monochrome Jokes, the present canvases reveal remnants of the artist’s process. Drips, brushstrokes, and spots of raw canvas characterize all four compositions. The work that reads “I stumbled upon a funeral…” differs from the other three, as Prince used a T-shirt rather than a traditional canvas as the painting’s support. This unorthodox medium is recurring in Prince’s practice. They have taken on many forms; some are jokes, while others feature the RP trademark or cute animals for his daughter’s bedroom. The Jokes series is tied inextricably to Prince’s interest in pop culture, a fascination which earned him the title “bastard offspring of Andy Warhol” (K. McKenna, “First House: A Project for Artforum,” Artforum, vol. 32, no. 4, p. 56). Like Warhol, Prince appropriates the work of others in his artistic practice. The present jokes are not of the artist’s creation but taken from comedians, newspaper comic strips, and the shared American psyche. Most people have heard some variation of these jokes, which raises the question: what do the things we laugh at say about us?

Richard Prince has had an immense impact on contemporary art, and his experimental exhibitions, such as First House, conclusively cemented him as part of the art historical canon. The inclusion of the present works in this exhibition makes them irreplaceable in Prince’s body of work. They are distinguished examples of his gift for taking recognizable Americana motifs and turning them on their head, creating an art-viewing experience that is both familiar and uncanny.