Some of you, perhaps, have heard of Richard Prince. For those of you who don’t know, he has on more than one occasion set the record for highest price on an auction photo. Also worth mentioning… His work is entirely unoriginal. He is a hack.
The thing that disturbs me most about this, is that the “high art” community adores him. They defend him. They pay millions of dollars for one of his ripoffs. It’s like buying a knockoff Rolex and paying 40 times as much as a real one. It is insanity.
And ultimately, what it shows, is that art cannot be trusted to the fine art community. For all the galas and fancy dresses and champagne and talking about how an image “speaks” to them, they seem to have no regard for the image whatsoever. Sam Abell‘s photo could never sell for 3.4million. But Richard Prince took a picture of his photo and sold it for nearly that. And whoever purchased it probably swooned over their good fortune.
This struck me as interesting because of a discussion I was having with my brother about originality. C.S. Lewis said, “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” This comment lead to Tim telling me that in Shakespeare’s time, acquiring and duplicating another persons work was considered acceptable if not common, so long as something was added. In Richard Princes case, there is no truth, and there is no addition. I have no illusions about creating an image never before seen. I do, however, intend to tell the truth in it. To attempt to show something as I see it. This is not, however, to show something as it is.
Therein lying the second problem. Nothing is added. If you look at Prince’s “sculptures” (remember when I said he was a hack?) you’ll at least see that he, so far as I know, created something. More likely though, he just towed it from wherever highway work was being done, but nevertheless, let’s assume(read:pretend) he made it. In this case, really, he is at least bringing something into the world. Yes, it is a shape that already exists, but he made it himself. It could possibly mean something to him or someone else.
Duplicating a photo, verbatim (so to speak) however, is not true. It is a forgery. It is buying a painting and selling it as your own. At least to paint a forgery would require a great deal of talent. To photograph an existing photo, really, does not. If he photographed an existing photo, and then painted cigarettes onto his cowboys, at least he would be adding something. He could add little red mustaches or devil horns or fruit baskets and at least it would be something he could say he made.
But alas, art is not for artists. It is for people who wish to pretend they are.
I have said this before,
“The fake works and struggles for all to see. He groans and strains and does his work in a glass room, and when emerging says, ‘Look at my masterpiece.’ The artist does his work in secret, and in silence: in darkened stone rooms, and when emerging says, ‘Look at the beauty I have found.’”
