Normality as Special Effect

Richard Prince (b. 1949) belongs to the so-called The Pictures Generation – a young generation that rebelled against the »image-denying« tendencies of the 1970s. Jeff Koons probably emerged as the best-known face of the movement. In contrast to him, Prince worked in a more subtle and restrained manner. He deciphered visual codes of banal consumer and entertainment culture – jokes, photos, advertising, the entire everyday cult couldn’t escape from him. He sampled and refined these codes, promoted them to a »seductive and strange« aesthetic that clearly stood out from the banal foundation. He took the same approach with his famous Cowboys series: He photographed cutouts of men on horseback wearing Western hats and smoking cigarettes, well known from tobacco advertising, and re-contextualized them. In this way, he became a pioneer of Appropriation Art and sparked debates about copyright and intellectual property.

Beginning Nov. 17, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, proves in its solo show Richard Prince that the Pictures Generation representative has a trained eye – a trained eye for big themes that »imperceptibly penetrate and permeate everything that surrounds us.« Through April 10, the museum is showing plenty of Prince's »normalcy as special effect.«