Musée Magazine Issue No. 11 - Vanity | Page 6

ri c h a rd p ri n c e
“wh e re e l se c a n yo u s e e t a r a r e id t r e n din g …”

STEVE MILLER: Social media is the new cultural medium from which it seems natural to make art.
Is it that simple that you came to this medium?
RICHARD PRINCE: Not sure I came to the medium. The medium came to me. And I think “natural”
is the perfect word to describe whatever you want to call it. 
SM: John McWhinnie wrote one of the clearest essays about your work in the Paris show organized by
Bob Rubin, American Prayer. In commenting about some of your earlier photo work John McWhinnie
noted their ordinariness or more specifically, “their normality is a special effect”. What I think he was
getting after was that in their deceptively simple and believable presentations the “Pictures... look
real but have no chance of being real.”  In fact, there are re-created with manipulated interventions
which we embrace because the created fiction feels more real than the real.
RP: “Normality as the next special effect” was a sentence I used to describe what I was doing in the
late seventies. I’ve always liked it when something “way out” is presented in an orderly fashion. When
the man who fell to earth really did fall to earth. Micheal Rene and David Bowie. (The Day The Earth
Stood Still. And the Man Who Fell To Earth).  They were cast as aliens but their physical “appearance”
wasn’t altered. They didn’t need make-up. They were just enough. They didn’t need a third eye. They
were slightly unhinged to begin with. What’s real is that they’re already too good to be true. 
SM: In this spirit, You have called some of your photos “extra-ordinary.” This seems the spirit of the Instagram work.  The sheer number of images makes them ordinary and your final re-presentation looks “normal” to the unseasoned eye. However, as the artist (art director,) you edit, condense and annotate the text.
RP: My contribution. That’s what was important. It wasn’t much but it was enough. “Commenting”
on, (and IN) someone’s Instagram, was as good as painting their portrait.
SM: None the less, the Instagram images were created by the people who post them.  It’s their representations of themselves but you subtly re-create a new narrative. For the viewer, at first glance,
it just looks like the world as we know it. What were you thinking in doing this seemingly modest
shift through editing?
RP: My involvement started out innocently. I was on the phone with Jessica Hart and looking at her
Instagram “feed” at the same time. I stopped at one of her posts and said to her... “someone should do
your portrait with this picture you posted of yourself”. She said, “why don’t you do it?” 
SM: Of course both art and advertising are manipulated images.  Desire and projection is a component of both.  This strikes me as true of the Instagram images yet, the authors are (for the most part)
neither artists nor advertisers (but, no doubt, advertising themselves.)   What completes this daisy
Portrait by Terry Richardson. All image Richard Prince. Untitled (portrait), 2014. Ink jet on canvas.
65 3/4 x 48 3/4 inches. (167 x 123.8 cm). All images ©Richard Prince, courtesy of Richard Prince
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