Richard Prince, Original (Installation View)

Richard Prince’s Original series is currently the subject of a new exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, nestled at the gallery’s Upper East Side bookstore showroom, and using Prince’s ‘arrangements’ of soft-core adult novels with artworks created for their covers, showing the next step in the artist’s fascination with collecting, ownership and presentation.  An ardent, perhaps even obsessive collector himself, Prince often mines and unfolds worn and sometimes clandestine images, not only from vintage pulps, which serve for the selection here, but also from copies of influential literary pieces, a pattern the artist has studied throughout his career of media appropriations.  A devoted member of a group of artists who started experimenting with appropriation in the ‘70’s, Prince usually employs minimal alteration to his subject matter; rearranging, editing and sometimes even rephotographing what already exists. (more…)

Richard Prince, Untitled (Portrait) (2014), Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photograph By Robert Mckeever.

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery’s smaller galleries at 976 Madison, Richard Prince’s new set of Instagram-culled pieces are nearly as potent in exposition as they are in person, a series of images pulled directly from the social media app’s user accounts, and blown up to immense scales, full-sized canvases that command the attention of viewers passing by on the street outside. (more…)

Richard Prince’s recently executed series of prints, created using the actual photos of celebrities’ Instagram accounts, have been selling strongly in a private sale through Gagosian, the New York Post reports.  An unconfirmed report has priced the works at up to $100,000.   (more…)

Richard Prince, Cheese & Crackers (2008), via Art Observed

Showing for the first time since Richard Prince settled his lawsuit with photographer Patrick Cariou over several of the source photographs, Gagosian’s uptown location is currently presenting Canal Zone, the series of photo and paint collages that sat at the center of the legal dispute for the first time since 2008. (more…)

Richard Prince has published a reflection on the state of the art auction market his website this month, noting the dissonance between his work and the astronomical sums paid on the secondary market for them, as well as his own feeling of disconnection from the works as they sell.  “The auctions might think they have something to do with what I make, but they don’t,” he says. “What they have is what they’ve always had… themselves.” (more…)

Following the resolution of his court case against photographer Patrick Cariou, Richard Prince’s Canal Series will return to Gagosian Gallery this May.  The last showing of the works, in 2008, generated more than $10 million in sales, and Larry Gagosian will look to achieve high sales again.  “Because of the litigation, everything was frozen,” Gagosian said in a telephone interview. “The art had to be put in storage. We couldn’t sell the catalog. But now that the air has cleared, it seemed like a good moment to take another look at the work.” (more…)

Walter Dahn, Walter (1984/85), via Venus Over Manhattan

Walter Dahn’s 4th Time Around (My Back Pages), an exhibition curated by Richard Prince, is a presentation of paintings, “anti-silkscreens,” and rare bronze sculptures by artist Walter Dahn, presenting a taste of his artistic practice since 1981. The title of the exhibition is derived two Bob Dylan songs, both favorites of the two artists (who have been friends since the late 80’s early 90’s).

Walter Dahn, 4th Time Around (My Back Pages) (Installation View), via Venus Over Manhattan Gallery
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A video, released online yesterday and since removed, purportedly depicts artist Richard Prince burning one of the five still disputed Canal Zone pictures that were challenged in court by photographer Patrick Cariou.  While Prince had won the case for the majority of the works in the series, Graduation, the work depicted in the film, was still under consideration for not being fully “transformative.”  Cariou had originally sued to have the works destroyed.  In the video, Prince is quoted as saying “to them this stands for money,” before having an assistant douse the work in gasoline and light it on fire. (more…)

Comparison between the two artist’s works, via Art Newspaper

A U.S. Court of Appeals judge has ruled that the majority of works in Richard Prince’s Canal Zone series, which appropriated photographs of Rastafarians by Patrick Cariou, are “transformative,” and therefore not an infringement on the copyrights for the original photographs.  The decision overturns a 2011 Disctrict Court ruling, which had ordered that 21 of the 30 works which had not yet been sold be turned over to Cariou to destroy. (more…)