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Property From a Private German Collection RICHARD PRINCE (b. 1949) SPRIRITUAL AMERICA signed, num...
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This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2003 Nov 13 @ 19:00UTC-5 : EST/CDT
Property From a Private German Collection
RICHARD PRINCE
(b. 1949)
SPRIRITUAL AMERICA
signed, numbered of ten and dated "R. Prince 1983" on the reverse
Ektacolor print
24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)
executed in 1983
this work is from an edition of ten and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist
ESTIMATE: $200,000-300,000
PROVENANCE
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, NEW YORK
EXHIBITED
COLOGNE, Museum Ludwig, ARS PRO DOMO, May-August 1992, p. 238 (another example exhibited; illustrated)
NEW YORK, Whitney Museum of American Art; Kunstverein Düsseldorf; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and ROTTERDAM, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, RICHARD PRINCE, May 1, 1992-November 27, 1993, p. 86 (another example exhibited; illustrated)
New York, David Zwilner Gallery; Zürich, Galerie Hauser and Wirth; COLOGNE, SK Stiftung and Kunsthaus Hamburg SOMEONE ELSE WITH MY FINGERPRINTS, February 1997-July 1998 (another example exhibited; illustrated)
NEW YORK, The Museum of Modern Art, FAME AFTER PHOTOGRAPH,
July 8-October 5,1999 (another work exhibited)
NEW YORK, Whitney Museum of American Art, THE AMERICAN CENTURY ART & CULTURE 1950-2000, September 26, 1999-January 23, 2000,
p. 285 (another work exhibited; illustrated)
BASEL, Museum Für Gegenwartskunst; Kunsthalle Zürich; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; RICHARD PRINCE PRINCIPAL GEMÄLDE UND FOTOGRAFIEN 1977-2001, December 8, 2001-July 28, 2002, p. 115 (another example exhibited; illustrated)
LITERATURE
Wolkenkratzer Art Journal, March/April 1988, no.2 (illustrated on cover)
N. Teicholz, "Hard Copy," GOTHAM, NEW YORK, December 20-27, 1999,
p. 21 (mentioned)
L. Phillips, RICHARD PRINCE, NEW YORK, 1992, p. 86 (illustrated)
P. Taylor, "Richard Prince, Art's Bad Boy, Becomes (Partly) Respectable," NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday May 17, 1992, p. 31 (mentioned)
B. Groys, C.A. Haenlein and N. Smolik, PHOTOGRAPHIEN 1977-1993, HANNOVER, 1994, pl.15 (illustrated)
B.M. Bürgi, B. Ruf and G.V. Tuyl, eds., RICHARD PRINCE: PHOTOGRAPHS, OSTFILDERN-RUIT, 2002, p. 115 (illustrated)
R. Brooks, J. Rian and L. Sante, RICHARD PRINCE, LONDON, 2003,
p. 52 (illustrated)
Richard Prince has often described himself as "practicing without a license," often referring to his appropriations as "stealing," as he explains: "The pictures I went after, 'stole' were too good to be true. They were about wishful thinking, public pictures that happen to appear in the advertising sections of mass market magazines, pictures not associated with an author" (L. Phillips, RICHARD PRINCE, NEW YORK, 1992, p. 85). With SPIRITUAL AMERICA, Prince made perhaps his most pivotal and daring theft, and certainly his most transgressive image. The picture was first taken by the commercial photographer Gary Grossman with permission of Brooke Shields' mother. Prince first came across it when he was working for Time-Life in the early 1980s. The ten-year-old Shields is naked, standing provocatively in a luxurious bathtub, her outstretched arms resting on its sides. Her stance suggests grace, sensuality, feminity and freedom. Her body is oiled, like that of a porn star and her face is made up to look like that of a young woman. Swirling steam rises up to her knees, while semi-abstract Moore-like sculpture figures decorate the foreground and background. The angle of the photograph is an upward shot, which pornographically transforms the child into woman-as-goddess, simultaneously coy, available, awkward and concealed (R. Brooks, J. Rian and
L. Sante, RICHARD PRINCE, LONDON, 2003, p. 53).
Upon discovering that Gross was planning on selling the rights to the photograph, Brooke's mother took Gross to court to establish ownership rights. Prince learned of the events in the New York newspapers, and chose the moment to exhibit the rephotographed work in a gold frame, anonymously in a gallery he discreetly established entitled Spiritual America on the lower east side of Manhattan; a gallery which would cease to exist at the exhibition's end. It has been explained that Prince's title SPIRITUAL AMERICA is not at all ironic because the picture really does represent the child-goddess of the consumer culture ideal; Brooke Shields is simultaneously untouchable, young, pristine, and "brand-new" as well as being available, inviting, and accessible. In other words, child sexuality is just one more mask for us to consume. In this context, newness and youth (innocence) function as inviolable attractions to acts of violation. Because the double mask of culture is not a fully formed concept for a child who is unfamiliar with the adult mask of nudity, undressing becomes a form of unmasking the image of a naked child. In SPIRITUAL AMERICA, Prince makes us encounter Brooke Shields on just such a threshold. The picture incorporates the suggestion of an unformed mask which, in turn, reveals the authentically private on the threshold of publicity. In other words, the sacredness of innocence is caught in the act of simulation. For me, SPIRITUAL AMERICA refers to what lies beyond the mask. [Prince] isolates images like freeze-frames within the flow of consumer turnover. Just as masks reveal another order of truth in some cultures, Prince's art too divulges a different order of truth in a secular consumer culture. The Sacred" (L. Phillips, ibid., pp. 91- 92).
Auction Location:
United States
Previewing Details:
Saturday November 1, 2003 10am to 5pm
Sunday November 2, 2003 1Pm to 5pm
Monday November 3, 2003 10am to 5pm
Tuesday November 4, 2003 10am to 5pm
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Thursday November 6, 2003 10am to 5pm
Friday November 7, 2003 10am to 5pm
Saturday November 8, 2003 10am to 5pm
Sunday November 9, 2003 1Pm to 5pm
Monday November 10, 2003 10am to 5pm
Tuesday November 11, 2003 10am to 5pm
Wednesday November 12, 2003 10am to 5pm
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