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Lot Essay
Richard Prince’s paintings stand as a distinctive synthesis of humor and intellectualism, all within the confines of an amalgamation of postmodern, conceptual and aesthetic strategies. Painted in 1999, Prince’s Limp emblematizes the artist’s iconic method of appropriation with a decontextualized joke, superimposed with a vibrant pink, sarcastically neo-expressionist composition. In true Prince fashion, the juxtaposition of the expressive figurations on the upper half; with the de-contextualized, matter-of-fact tone of his written joke along the lower edge, create a nebulous and tantalizing effect that rests at the core of Prince’s witty explorations of authorship and individuality.
Prince has divided his composition into two, contrasting sections. The majority of the canvas consists of buoyant pink and orange painted background with sporadic rows of rudimentary figures and flowers interspersed throughout. The frenzy of these seemingly rapidly drawn figurations superimposed against the saturated expressionist background creates an active and engaging surface that cleverly evokes a range of art historical sources including Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning and Jean-Michel Basquiat. This energetic scene is anchored by a horizontal band below, painted uniformly in white, over which Prince has painted a joke that references the sardonic and dark humor that is typical of the artist’s oeuvre: “Doctor my husband limps because his left leg is an inch shorter than his right. What would you do in his case?” It reads. “Probably limp” comes the sardonic reply.
Emerging amongst the appropriation artists of the 1980s, Prince initially reached acclaim with his iconic series of cowboy photographs, in which the artist developed his signature strategy of appropriating imagery from popular sources (including advertising), all the while grounding his work in a broader exploration of American cultural influence. Prince’s wider oeuvre features a myriad of styles and modes of expression that defy any sort of linear stylistic categorization; yet his relentless challenges to notions of originality and authorship in art has placed him at the forefront of postmodernist conceptual practice. In the late 1980s, the artist began exploring the incorporation of jokes–perhaps the literal embodiment of anonymous authorship–into his work. Portending the artist’s deadpan demeanor, Prince explains the beginnings of his joke paintings as follows: “Artists were casting sculptures in bronze, making huge paintings, talking about prices and clothes and cars and spending vast amounts of money. So I wrote jokes on little pieces of paper and sold them for $10 each” (R. Prince, Richard Prince: Spiritual America, 2007, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, p. 37).
Prince eventually pushed this conceptual challenge to the extreme by removing any illustrations all together, and silk-screening his text in a mechanical and detached manner directly against flat, monochrome canvases–making the written out joke the subject matter in it of itself. In his appropriations of the stylistic conventions of Minimalism to depict low-brow jokes, Prince created a mocking and humorous affront to the austerity of the Minimalist movement past, while calling into question the ideals of high vs. low art at large. A decade later, the artist revisited his experimentations with jokes in works such as Limp–where he presents his jokes alongside disjunctive, pseudo-abstract imagery: a continuation of the artist’s ongoing explorations of appropriation and meaning in relation to image and text. Similar to his joke paintings of the 1980s, these works challenge the dramatic and emotive yearns of Expressionist movements past; by superimposing expressionist imagery with dead-pan humor. However, despite their amusing nature, Prince’s joke paintings, like much of his practice, are grounded in profound intellectual explorations of the limits of linguistic and visual meaning vis-à-vis notions of originality and authorship in art–an investigation that defines the mythology of Richard Prince’s oeuvre.
In its appropriation of authorless material and salient disembodiment of text and image, Limp is a quintessential example of the artist’s conceptual program. Prince’s smart tension between the arresting scale and cheerful composition of Limp create a captivating effect that augurs the artist’s most iconic works, such as his Cowboys and Nurse paintings; while the premise of a joke as subject matter, epitomizes Prince’s canonical challenge to the conventions of high and low art; authorship and individuality. In its careful trepidation of language, image, humor and wit, Limp embodies Prince’s astute ability to create works that are equally as intellectually engaging, as they are visually stimulating.
Prince has divided his composition into two, contrasting sections. The majority of the canvas consists of buoyant pink and orange painted background with sporadic rows of rudimentary figures and flowers interspersed throughout. The frenzy of these seemingly rapidly drawn figurations superimposed against the saturated expressionist background creates an active and engaging surface that cleverly evokes a range of art historical sources including Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning and Jean-Michel Basquiat. This energetic scene is anchored by a horizontal band below, painted uniformly in white, over which Prince has painted a joke that references the sardonic and dark humor that is typical of the artist’s oeuvre: “Doctor my husband limps because his left leg is an inch shorter than his right. What would you do in his case?” It reads. “Probably limp” comes the sardonic reply.
Emerging amongst the appropriation artists of the 1980s, Prince initially reached acclaim with his iconic series of cowboy photographs, in which the artist developed his signature strategy of appropriating imagery from popular sources (including advertising), all the while grounding his work in a broader exploration of American cultural influence. Prince’s wider oeuvre features a myriad of styles and modes of expression that defy any sort of linear stylistic categorization; yet his relentless challenges to notions of originality and authorship in art has placed him at the forefront of postmodernist conceptual practice. In the late 1980s, the artist began exploring the incorporation of jokes–perhaps the literal embodiment of anonymous authorship–into his work. Portending the artist’s deadpan demeanor, Prince explains the beginnings of his joke paintings as follows: “Artists were casting sculptures in bronze, making huge paintings, talking about prices and clothes and cars and spending vast amounts of money. So I wrote jokes on little pieces of paper and sold them for $10 each” (R. Prince, Richard Prince: Spiritual America, 2007, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, p. 37).
Prince eventually pushed this conceptual challenge to the extreme by removing any illustrations all together, and silk-screening his text in a mechanical and detached manner directly against flat, monochrome canvases–making the written out joke the subject matter in it of itself. In his appropriations of the stylistic conventions of Minimalism to depict low-brow jokes, Prince created a mocking and humorous affront to the austerity of the Minimalist movement past, while calling into question the ideals of high vs. low art at large. A decade later, the artist revisited his experimentations with jokes in works such as Limp–where he presents his jokes alongside disjunctive, pseudo-abstract imagery: a continuation of the artist’s ongoing explorations of appropriation and meaning in relation to image and text. Similar to his joke paintings of the 1980s, these works challenge the dramatic and emotive yearns of Expressionist movements past; by superimposing expressionist imagery with dead-pan humor. However, despite their amusing nature, Prince’s joke paintings, like much of his practice, are grounded in profound intellectual explorations of the limits of linguistic and visual meaning vis-à-vis notions of originality and authorship in art–an investigation that defines the mythology of Richard Prince’s oeuvre.
In its appropriation of authorless material and salient disembodiment of text and image, Limp is a quintessential example of the artist’s conceptual program. Prince’s smart tension between the arresting scale and cheerful composition of Limp create a captivating effect that augurs the artist’s most iconic works, such as his Cowboys and Nurse paintings; while the premise of a joke as subject matter, epitomizes Prince’s canonical challenge to the conventions of high and low art; authorship and individuality. In its careful trepidation of language, image, humor and wit, Limp embodies Prince’s astute ability to create works that are equally as intellectually engaging, as they are visually stimulating.