Richard Prince — Pre-Appropriation Works — 1973-1974 — Michèle didier Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: July 7 → September 1, 2012

mfc-michèle didier’s first year in Paris comes to an end with a light summer show, but nonetheless exceptional, the exhibition Richard Prince: Pre-Appropriation Works, 1973-1974.

Richard Prince, internationally known American artist, particularly famous for his re-photographed Marlboro’s advertisements and for his series of Nurse paintings, is an expert in appropriation art and probably the artist who counts best America’s fin de siècle.

However, the focus of the exhibition is put here on the years “before the appropriation”, and more precisely on the years 1973 and 1974. The works shown at the gallery were collected in the early seventies by Angus Whyte, Richard Prince’s first art dealer. Etchings, collages, monoprints, drawings and letters are examples of the techniques the young Prince has experimented.

On one hand, Flavored Letters, written in 1974, can be considered as Mail Art, an artistic movement that many of the artists of this era have practiced; Richard Prince showed a significant interest in researching the artistic expressions of his time.

On the other hand, transfer technique, the intermediate process between the collected and the distributed image, is recurring in his work, almost systematic. This clearly announces what would appear later: Richard Prince’s trademark, appropriation.

These early researches testify to the artist’s integration in conceptual concerns of this period and prefigure works that will make Richard Prince an artist with a remarkable individuality. The exhibition Richard Prince: Pre-Appropriation Works, 1973-1974 enables us to discover the premises of Richard Prince’s art, back to the origin of his creation.