You’d probably make more if it was in landscape format. This doesn’t go with any of my furniture. T.
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The artist creates photographs by the interaction of his eye, finger, and camera, too. It just so happens that the subjects of his photographs are other photographs. Should urban photographers pay back royalties to the architects whose work is the subject of their photography?
Once again, Robert Hughes grilling Alberto Mugrabi in The Mona Lisa Curse, 65 minutes in:
H: “You take Prince to be an artist of significance, do you?”
M: “Absolutely.”
H: “What is significant about his work?”
M: “He’s a guy that has his own ideas. He’s a person that has done a lot of different types of work.”
H: “But Richard Prince’s work seems to consist of basically two types. One is those rather weak jokes. And the other one is the transcription of photographs in paint.”
M: “He’s such a deep person that maybe you don’t see it through his paintings, but he definitely is.”
H: “If he is, why does one not see it in his paintings?”
M: Pauses. Stammers. Points to this.
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There are pretty good Photoshop plugins that can make quite passable blow ups of low resolution images. I blew up some 6mp images to roughly the size in this exhibit, and they look pretty good.
Also, fuck this guy. What a dick.
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Not theft, Copyright infringement.
This is a photo of a photo of Richard Prince. Bidding starts at 100k and the fine art print will be re-photographed, fine art printed again and sent to the highest bidder.
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What do rich people look for when buying art? A famous (or upcoming) “name” whose work is likely to increase in value in the near future. Yeah, I know, that’s not terribly helpful as an artist.
What I like is how it is a deconstruction of what conversation is. Does coversation flow in one linear path, or is it “branched” or “nested” based on who is talking with whom? Are they speaking to eachother, or merely shouting into the wildernrss? These questions tug at you as you examine the piece. Ceci n’est pas une conversation.
Also, who are the conversers? They could literally be anyone; A prince of Saudi Arabia, a mother of three with dustbowl roots, a churlish 14 year old, pedantic beyond his freckle-faced years, a dog. The little green circle with a letter gives you nothing. No hint. Or does it tell you everything? What does it mean that it’s not a square?
Ultimately, the piece shows us a fleeting grasp at immotality, ironically encoded, at its deepest level, in fragile media. In fact it is a print of what was once digital, the fleeting made whole, as a prince or a 17th century explorer would observe pedants on a scroll. They are life, they are death. Ceci n’est pas une life.
i’ll give you one million dollars.
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It depends on the buyer, some of them actually go for works they like and don’t really care that much about appreciation. Other people only care about appreciation. Still other people only like what their artistic consultant likes.
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Two takeaways:
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The “elite” NY art world long ago ceased to be relevant as an arbiter of good art.
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Prince is a grade-A asshole. Taking some non-celebrity’s personal image and blowing it up to sell to rich people is just a giant dick move, regardless of whether it’s “legal” or not.
I assume this is a deliberate troll move to get press (which worked). I hold the gallery equally responsible; perhaps someone can find a personal picture of the gallery’s owners, blow it up, and offer it to the gallery as “new work?”
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I’ve never been overly fond of Richard Prince, but in the past he’s done some interesting work. This whole “rephotography” thing has already been long since done to death; it’s no longer contributing anything to any discussions in art. His earlier re-photography work was repurposing commercial images and placing them in an art context. This doesn’t work that way - given how “art” is defined, works on the internet are in a somewhat ambiguous context, but clearly this is work intended to be seen as art to some degree. The re-photography of art photographs has also already been done - and done more interestingly - by Sheri Levine. It’s sad to see artists who were doing interesting and important work 30+ years ago get famous and get stuck doing the same thing they were known for then, over and over again. The work ends up artistically dead, done purely for the cash, as is obviously the case here.
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This use doesn’t seem to fall under Cariou v. Prince because the success of Prince in that case was based on the transformative nature of his additions. He actually added something “artistic” to the copied works in that case.
It looks like these are just large prints of the original works. Without artistic additions, he may just run into Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. and be told by a court that he’s not creating a new work because he’s just faithfully replicating an existing work without modification. And if he’s not creating an arguably new work, then he would be violating the copyrights on those existing works that he’s printing and selling.
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I’m not saying that’s what rich people are exclusively spending money on, but when we’re talking about work at this price point and above (for this kind of work), then it’s mostly of that sort.
touché
Unless they genuinely like the work. I’ve spent a lot of time in rich person houses and the majority of collectors are really knowledgeable about the work and are less concerned about the value going up, figuring it’ll be after they die anyway, they want to enjoy it now.
I’d say the ones who only go after art that will appreciate aren’t actually that interested in the work, only the use of it as an investment. I don’t like working with them.
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Is it signed by any of the artists?
I don’t just mean work bought as investments, though. What I’m saying is that people may “like” works because they’re status objects by known artists being sold for significant sums (which will also go up in price). That makes them “better” to some people. You don’t buy a photograph for $100,000 just because you like the image independent of who made it (especially when it’s work like this, where the only thing Prince is adding is the cachet of his name). There’s so much art out there at such a huge range of prices for the same sort of quality, you can easily buy work that appeals without spending that kind of money - but it requires a willingness to buy completely unknown artists.
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They just go to some stupid gallery show put on by some wealthy dude’s daughter who happens to have stumbled upon some space in SoHo. They get some wine and jerk each other off.
So yea, find a way into that group… 
That really depends on the jurisdiction. In California for instance, you can in fact sell photos of people without their permission as long as it doesn’t hit certain privacy issues like taking photos of them in a place they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
