In the present lot, Untitled (Publicity), 2003, Richard Prince juxtaposes one of his iconic cowboy photographs with two publicity photographs of topless cowgirls. The cowboy photograph on the left is an example of Richard Prince’s “rephotography,” his technique of photographing an advertisement, in this case a Marlborough ad, giving the mass-produced image a new life reframing it as high art. Similarly his found publicity photographs, here a pin-up photographed by Bunny Yeager and pop musician Sheryl Crow, take on new scrutiny when framed alongside his own re-photograph, with the repetition of the cowgirl emphasized, and the images that pop culture presents as truth repositioned to reveal their superficiality.
Prince collects these glossy photographs—some of which are inscribed with authentic signatures, while others are clearly marked in his own hand. As today’s stars are no longer just movie actors, but fashion models, socialites, musicians, and athletes, the range of subjects is increasingly wide, the circle of identification ever expanding. As with Gangs, Prince creates discrete sets of select images, called Publicities, frequently basing their combinations on incidental formal relationships…And whether intended to or not, the endless array of cheesecake poses by barely clad women in numerous Publicities begs the question whether this photographic trope, which reduces its subject to nothing more than a physical object, will ever be rejected, replaced, or rethought.
N. Spector, “Nowhere Man,” Richard Prince, New York, 2007, p. 47