Louisiana catalog about the American artist, Richard Prince (b. 1949), whom Louisiana presents from November 2022 in the exhibition, Same Man , in the exhibition series, Louisiana on Paper. Prince is one of America's most influential artists after 1980 and is particularly known as a central figure in the so-called Pictures Generation, which became known for "stealing" existing images, re-photographing, twisting and mixing them, scratching, overwriting, cutting, pasting - in general, interpret other people's images so that new meanings and layers emerge. The catalog here is designed like an LP cover that can be unfolded: Prince largely incorporates elements from the culture of his own youth.
The exhibition's title, Same Man , in a way gives the visitors a helping hand in relation to Prince's very different expressions. Because it is to him, even though he has never sought to have his art identified based on a certain look or a particular style, just as with the exhibition's works from 1972 and right up to 2021, one cannot easily form a clear picture of the artist behind the piece.
You can say that rendering reality has always been the real goal for Prince and what has guided his artistic choices. By re-photographing consumer goods advertisements, the girls from the motorcycle magazines or the American man, as the cigarette brand Marlboro has formulated him, he stole the image with the camera and opened it to the many forms of desire that lie within. Also his own. Prince himself emphasizes this non-fiction as an underlying current in his art. He doesn't ask questions, he says, he seeks answers. And there is no doubt that identity is an important topic.
The focus of Louisiana's exhibition is Prince's work on paper, but it is also generally introductory and includes a handful of very early drawings. They are included because they not only bear witness to the artist's lifelong relationship with drawing and paper as a medium – they also tell how Prince, with paper work, established a connection to the supremely most strenuous chapter for his own generation – painting. The painting, understood as the preferred imprint of the greats on the world, the pinnacle of modernist pop.
Prince's works on paper become a kind of substitute, a redemption of the painting. And the other way round: That the photograph can also have a kind of physicality.
Dimensions: H: 121 x W: 83.5 cm
Published by: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Number of pages: 2 - large format, printed on both sides
Release year: 2022
Language: Danish and English