Art Talk! - Richard Prince- Part 1

PART 2 OF ART TALK! - http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=1219795828&bccl=MTIxMzg3NTEzMF9fRVRD

PART 3 OF ART TALK! - http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=1219795828&bccl=MTIxMzg3NTEzMF9fRVRD

PART 4 OF ART TALK! - http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=1213949991&bccl=MTIxMzg3NTEzMF9fRVRD

Art Talk! is a new original series on VBS in which we track down some of the most exciting new artists and established contemporary masters to visit their studios, talk about their work, and just generally ask them, "How and why." The first episode features esteemed American artist Richard Prince in a candid afternoon at his upstate New York compound. Richard currently has a retrospective at called "Spiritual America" that will run till January 9th, 2008.

See more at www.VBS.tv

Category:

Entertainment

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• www.VBS.tv
• Richard
• Prince
• Art
• Talk
• Guggenheim
• Modern
• VICE
• Painting
• Picasso
• Nurses

[MrRipperJack]

Hmmm...What's to actually stop others from making additional copies of Prince's work? Would he mind if those copies bore his signature? Why should he...even those copies would be an expression of art as well! Hey, everybody can be a millionaire!

From his wiki entry: "But through his thievery he is creating something new, something Richard Prince. At the end of the day he is still dismantling the original, whether it is greatly noticeable or not." What a jerk. Artist? Not! FAIL!

[oleedee]

why not put it all on youtube and not link to your buggy advert riden shit hole of a home page.

[CatZula]

@OvalGray Finally, as far as his photographic skills, you are misinformed. Prince has repeatedly admitted that he had no formal training in photography and saw appropriation as a strategy to "practice photography without a license". The intellectual copyright right issues are a much more recent invention to try to justify the early work. If he really didn't hope some people would mistake the work for his own, why not also credit the original photographers?

[CatZula]

@OvalGray Next, ethics and art are two different things? An immoral act is OK if committed in the name of art? Maybe you want to live in that world, not me. I'm not saying all immoral art should be destroyed, but Prince is a thief...

[CatZula]

@OvalGray First, recontextualization: the argument, to my mind, only works (and I still don't think it works) while his work is in a gallery surrounded by pieces of his work and supplemented by some gallerists essay. Once you take an individual piece out of the gallery context, I see no difference between his photo and the original. Also, I think it's pretty clear that he IS riffing on the Old West theme. He repeatedly invokes cowboys in his work.

[OvalGray]

I oughtn't argue that Prince isn't a thief. But ethics and art are different. If he's immoral, he's still interesting. The simplicity of a term like "thief" implies dullness, as if Prince just wasn't talented enough to take his own photos of cowboys and hopes nobody'll know that the images aren't originals. That's simply not true; his work is about the ideas of intellectual copyright we've been discussing here. He's chosen to be a "bad guy" in order to bring these topics to light.

[OvalGray]

My point is that recontextualisation is a reality and that it's at the heart of Prince's art. I don't think anybody that knows anything about Prince assumes that his appropriated cowboy pictures have anything to do with an affinity he feels with the old west. Even if his art only amounts to theft, it's because his art is ABOUT theft, not because he wants people to think it was him who took the original photos of cowboys. Prince has never had any qualms about admitting he uses others' material.

[CatZula]

@OvalGray 3.) I look at Prince's photo and see no meaning different from the obvious meaning inherent in the original photo. Are you asserting that I must, without any will of my own, accept Prince's explanation? If I refuse, does that extinguish his "work"? AND, what if I can only see the photo--how would I know what his meaning is as opposed to the original? Wouldn't he have to write that down? And once written, isn't his only real contribution to "the piece" the written explanation?

[CatZula]

@OvalGray Three Points:

1.) A tree is not fabricated by a person. So that's hardly an apt analogy.

2.) The whole reason people make multiple copies of photos is to be able to claim each copy as their own to control and sell them (and Prince does this). The original photographer owns, say...5 photographs. Prince makes a copy (sadly none of these are signed). Prince steals one of the photographer's copy. Which copy do you give back to the photographer?

[OvalGray]

The theft of a photographer’s photo would involve a robbery of the photographer’s printed photo from that photographer or buyer or place where the photo’s shown. Violating intellectual copyright is another matter. But as Prince readily admits that his works are photos of others’ photos, ascribing to them different meanings than the photos they’re photos of had, he’s not violated any intellectual copyright because the intellectual value of the originals and of his works are different.

[OvalGray]

As an individual often embalmed in the too-uncompromising ethos of ethics, it was my immediate reaction to abhor him. Theft, it then seemed to me, was the be-all-and-end-all of his art.

After thinking things through for awhile, I began to see a distinction. A photo of a photo might look like the photo it’s of, but it isn’t its source any more than a photo of a tree's a tree. In a real way, physically at least, his photos of others’ photos are as much his own as any photographer’s.

[Anthony77769]

COngrats Mr.Prince thanks for stealing from Sam Abell