COWBOY by Richard Prince

A collection of works by American artist Richard Prince.

The book is the culmination of Prince's 40-year research project on the cowboy as an American symbol.

In the mid-1970s, Prince, who had aspirations of becoming a painter, worked for TIME, clipping articles for magazine writers. When he removed the articles from the magazines, all that was left were a plethora of advertisements, depicting objects of desire such as products and models in a glamorous way. Prince began photographing these advertisements, cropping and enlarging them as he pleased, and selling them as his own work. He was particularly interested in the cowboy motif, which often appears in advertisements for Marlboro cigarettes. His work then shook the art world. He was sued many times, and his works were a hot topic, breaking records for the price paid for contemporary photographs. His obsession with cowboys remains even in this age when Instagram is used as a major medium. In his new series, which uses the latest technology to edit TIME magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, Prince uses cowboys as a motif to show that advertising is less original, less appropriating, and less trustworthy than ever.

(Excerpt from distributor's commentary)

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Title: COWBOY
Artist: Richard Prince
PRESTEL PUBLISHING, 2020
Softcover, 230 x 305 mm
484 pages
First edition
¥9,800 + tax