Richard Prince talks to Steve LaFreniere

Richard Prince talks to Steve LaFreniere
ARTFORUM International March 2003, XLI No. 7 pg.70
40th Anniversary Special Issue: the 1980's Part I
Steve LaFreniere: You weren't in Douglas Crimp's "Pictures" exhibition, but
a lot of people seem to think you were, maybe because of your later
association with Helene Winer, who was at Artists Space before starting Metro Pictures.
Did you feel a kinship to the artists in the "Pictures" show?

Richard Prince: I've never said this before, but Doug Crimp actually asked
me to be in that show. I read his essay and told him it was for shit, that it
sounded like Roland Barthes. We haven't spoken since. I didn't know anybody
in the show at the time. I later became friends with Troy Brauntuch. I still
like his work.

SL: What you read didn't ring true in terms of what you were doing?

RP: I guess in those days I didn't particularly understand the relationship
between artist and critic, and I didn't care to establish any relationship.
Critics tried to tell you what you were doing, and wanted you to make the kind
of work that they were thinking about. I probably resented that. I had a
similar argument with Craig Owens. We had a difficult exchange and I ended up
not talking to him. But I more or less had feelings about what they were
describing. We were on parallel roads.
I also didn't understand Crimp's choices. There were a whole bunch of
people who could have been in that show, like James Casebere and Jim Welling, or
Laurie Simmons and Sarah Charlesworth- but none of them were, and that didn't
seem to make sense to me. There didn't seem to be any photography.

SL: Did not being in the show end up affecting your career?

RP: Well, like you said, people seem to think I was in it. People like
Cindy Sherman weren't in it too. I don't know who really ever read that essay.
Those shows and essays are for other critics. So I don't know what affects a
career. I do know that I would continually change what I did, which didn't help
in the beginning, but did in the end.

SL: I'd always assumed that you purposely made your early photos have an
amateur look, and that you'd done them quickly. But looking at them today would
suggest otherwise. How worked-on were pictures like Untitled (three women
looking in the same direction) 1980?

RP: I had limited technical skills regarding the camera. Actually, I had no
skills. I played the camera. I used a cheap commercial lab to blow up the
pictures. I made editions of two. I never went into a darkroom. And yes, I
really worked hard on Women. I mean, that piece still looks like it was purposely made.

SL: So you sort of fell into photography?

RP: In the early '80's I didn't have the subject matter for painting. I
didn't have the "jokes" until 1986. What I did have was magazines. I was
working at Time Life and was surrounded by magazines. I wanted to present the
images I saw in these magazines as naturally as when they first appeared. Making a
photograph of them seemed the best way to do it. I tore up the magazines and
re-photographed the pages. What I put out was a real photograph. It was
seamless. It wasn't a collage. I didn't exactly "fall" as much as steal.

SL: The cliché is that the dealers were all powerful then. But what about
the collectors?

RP: I think certain collections are powerful. I saw one in 1987, at the
Merino's in Monaco, where they placed a big Thomas Ruff next to a "Big Nude" by
Helmut Newton. They were leaning against the wall. It made me change my mind.
In the early '80's, to be collected by Charles Saatchi was another way to be
included, to be a part of what was happening. To be in instead of out, or so
it seemed at the time. Anyway, I was "left out". Nobody bought my early
work. I couldn't even give it away.

SL: You don't have such great memories of the collectors.

RP: The Rubells gave pretty good parties. Michael Schwartz started
collecting in the mid-'80's, concentrating on about ten artists. I remember one woman
collector asking me who "anon" was. She was surprised she didn't know him or
her, because they seemed to be listed in a lot of collections. She didn't
realize "anon" stood for anonomys. The best thing about being collected is
getting money.

SL: Do you think the critics understood what you were doing?

RP: I wasn't aware that there was much critical writing in the '80's about
my work. I think people were more focused on David Salle, Schnabel, Fischl,
Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer.

SL: Well, I remember one person gushing about your work's "complete
eventlessness".

RP: That sounds like cartoon language. Kind of like when Susan Sontag
describes taking a photograph as a "soft murder".

SL: Longo, Schnabel, Sherman-they've all made movies. I've often wondered
why you haven't.

RP: I'm not very collaborative. I like being alone. Working alone. I hate
actresses. I don't like having to ask permission. A green light is not something
I'd be happy waiting for.

SL: What films back then had an impact on you?

RP: The Road Warrior. First Blood. Alien. Drugstore Cowboy. The Terminator.
Did Blade Runner come out in the '80's? If it did, I liked that one- the
original, not the director's cut.

SL: In your novel Why I Go to the Movies Alone, there's this notion of
"counterfeit memory", the media landscape replacing personal history. Has that
idea panned out?

RP: Do androids dream of electric sheep? Virtual reality. Cloning.
Sampling. Substitutes. Surrogates. Stand-ins. It's either here or right around
the corner.

SL: True, and a lot of art is now addressing those very subjects. Do you
have any connection to younger artists?

RP: Most of my connections are with artists who are dead. From Smithson on
back. I go to the Met and crash on fourteenth-century icons. Younger ones?
I don't know. I like Collier Schorr. John Currin.

SL: What did you make of digital theorists like Gene Youngblood, who found
the cautions of people like Rosalind Krauss and Baudrillard alarmist?

RP: I'm not sure what "digital theory" is. I don't know who Gene Youngblood
is. I never read Baudrillard. I read Christian Metz. I read Truman Capote.
When my little girl falls on the pavement and her teeth go through her lower
lip and I have to take her to the hospital and watch her get stitches, I
don't really think about "almost real" or "really real". I don't think about
what's real anymore.

SL: Have you ever thought of your work as abstract?

RP: The "Joke" paintings are abstract. Especially in Europe, if you can't
speak English, if you can't read them they become abstract.

SL: Yes, I imagine the photos were received somewhat differently outside of
the US!

RP: First time I showed my photos was in Germany, 1978. Artists like
Kippenberger and Walter Dahn were very supportive. They grew up on Armed Services
Radio; they liked rock 'n roll; they liked the "Girlfriend" pictures.

SL: So many of those subjects you appropriated then still have pop currency
today. There are still biker-chick magazines on the stands, showgirl jokes in
Playboy, and Marlboro ads with cowboys. I just looked through my copy of
Inside World, and it seemed pretty up to date.

RP: The subject matter that I chose wasn't exactly popular, but it wasn't
obscure. It just wasn't fashionable. It was more like mainstream cults.
They're still around. They show up at airports. They have their own conventions.
They have their own C-SPAN. They call you up just before you sit down to
dinner. Anyone can find them.

SL: What was your first thought that you heard Andy Warhol had died?

RP: Sad. We had the same dentist. I used to run into him in the waiting
room. We used to talk about "collecting". This was the early '80's. I had
just started collecting first-edition books. He was a great artist.

SL: I recently read an essay that describes your work as "tight-lipped in
the Warholian manner". I thought that was pretty funny.

RP: I'm not sure what it means. Close to the vest? All-knowing?
Effortless? I remember seeing Warhol interviewed: He let someone else answer the
questions for him. He just sat there smiling, like he was throwing his voice.
"Tight-lipped"? I'm thinking it might mean "ventriloquist".

SL: There were references to so many bands in your work. Were you inspired
by music?

RP: I'm not so sure I was inspired by them, but I liked the Smiths. I saw
Sonic Youth in the late '80's in London. They were great. I liked the way
they rocked the Kitchen.

SL: You worked consistently back then with "trash" imagery, an area that
designers also began mining for 'zines and CD covers. Some even mimicked your
strategies, like blurring and aggressive cropping. Were you taking notice?

RP: If I noticed anything, I noticed that rock videos in the mid-'80's started using
"found" footage and started shooting black-and-white images with color film.

SL: The latter I would very much identify with you. Are you still
fascinated by muscle cars?

RP: Another "like", another subtext.. The movie Vanishing Point. The movie
Bullitt. I like the way a particular car gets painted by a teenager, you
know, primed and flaked. Carroll Shelby, the guy who put together the 1967 GT500
Mustang, is very cool. Car culture is pretty much about extended adolescence.

SL: I met a young woman recently who was wearing an Ed "Big Daddy: Roth
T-shirt. She later e-,ailed me that she was "into hot rod stuff, Kid Congo
Powers, Robert Williams, and Richard Prince. It seemed like a logical paradigm.

RP: I don't know who Kid Congo Powers is. Great name. I know the other
two. I wonder if it would be a logical paradigm if she were wearing a Jackson
Pollack T-shirt.