I was commissioned to write this essay two weeks ago. Richard Prince has a new book, called The Entertainers, which showcases a photographic series of the same name from 1982-83. I’d never heard of this body of work before. The day before I learned all of this, an interview I’d recently given was published in an Italian magazine. Their first question was,
“How old are you?”
I said I was 49, and for once I wasn’t lying. Their second question was,
“What’s your job?”
I’ve never answered a question more honestly. I said,
“I am an entertainer.”
The Entertainers is published by Prince’s pseudonymous imprint, Fulton Ryder, so is self-published. It features reproductions of work from the series, along with related imagery. Manipulated photographs of characters Prince has long been interested in; aspiring actors, “models”, models, singers, porno people. It’s a who’s who of people striving to become the who’s who of the entertainment industry.
The Entertainers is bookended by two short stories, which combined tell you everything you need to know about the artist.
Counterfeit Memory tells the story of a man who sounds a lot like Prince. He works for a magazine in the “tear sheet” department, and on his breaks, enjoys all the salacious entertainment offered by Times Square in the early 1980’s. The view as seen from a Howard Johnson’s restaurant is described as populated by,
“...hookers, con-artists, barkers, three card monte. There’s as much open, predictable action there as any place in Times Square.”
A perfect description of Prince and his work. Anthropologists occasionally begin to identify with those they study, adopt the mannerisms and accents, wear the clothes, date the locals. Few artists have been accused of running cons on the art world as much as Prince has. Rephotography—a tedious word—practically begs to be accused of being no more than a hustle. The last few words, the deeper insight,
“There’s as much open, predictable action there…”
The overwhelming spectacle of any seedy neighbourhood can leave you off balance, vulnerable. Open, predictable action, that’s where the safety lies. Chaos is seductive, but dangerous. Finding points of control, patterns of predictable action, engenders a sense of stability. By rephotographing, by documenting a view instead of occupying it, Prince manages his apparent addiction to a very American stratum of culture.
The book closes with The Lone Ranger, a page and a half long story detailing Prince’s childhood introduction to his drug of choice, entertainment. His mother, if he’s in fact the protagonist, gives him a Zorro sword, and some gloves. From Zorro, Superman. The story is written very factually, very realistically. Prince describes working for Time Life in the mid-seventies, and doing some research on George Reeves, the tragic actor who first played Superman on television. This sentence.
“It’s true he died falling out of a window.”
But it’s not true. Reeves shot himself—or was shot, himself—in the head. Nobody knows. Lots of conspiracies, countless YouTube videos. “It’s true.” Beware of people who insist something is true. In a story already murky with confusion, Prince adds some more, with one throwaway sentence. When I noticed this I felt like I’d won some game Prince involved me in the moment I first discovered his work thirty years ago. Who else knows? Do I get a free book, a painting?
Was Prince really born in the Panama Canal Zone? Were his parents really spies? Who cares. Don’t fall for the trick. Magicians distract you, keep you looking up when you should be looking down, and then boom, the rabbit from the hat, and you think they’re brilliant, but really, you’ve just thanked someone for hustling you. Moral panic. People have had it about Prince’s appropriation of the Marlboro Man, of other people’s Instagram accounts. In 2000 I was in Florence. I watched a group of grifters working some tourists. Once the crowd dispersed, I stood up and applauded. Because they deserved it. Because it’s an art. It’s called con-art for a reason.
This isn’t a criticism of Prince, it’s praise. One thing my dad always said was that you can’t con a con-artist. That’s true. I don’t have much empathy for suckers. But people who appreciate Prince’s work aren’t suckers, unless they are. He’s a great artist, one of my very favourites, and I’d love to hang his work in my home. I would not, however, pay ninety grand as some people did for prints from his Instagram. That he can get that money, that people will cough it up, that’s the genius. I love Richard Prince’s joke paintings, and think they’re great art, but as art, they reach their absolute apex when the auction ends, and someone signs their name to a cheque bursting with zeros.
Big art themes. Memento Mori. Looking at the mostly anonymous people in The Entertainers, I imagine many are dead, and all are old. In Prince’s photographs they’re perfect, beautiful and shiny, packaged to be sold and consumed, but maybe weren’t. Ambition is beautiful, athletic, truly American, but it’s also tragic, most often unmet, and heartbreaking. Prince is truly generous in his work, he elevates something mundane, a glossy headshot, to the level of ‘high art’, whatever that may be. When Prince made the Marlboro Man photos, the man who authored the source material, Norm Clasen, was upset. He thought he was being ripped off. He was wrong. He was being led into the golden chamber of art, elevated beyond his role as simple commercial photographer, and placed alongside Giotto, Matisse and Warhol. In The Entertainers Prince demonstrates his reverence for the ostensibly lowly, the second-rate, the character actors, gaffers, Hollywood waitresses and Time Square rent boys. Without these people, who operate in the background, there’s no foreground. If entertainment is a body, Prince celebrates the guts, the wildly pumping organs and beleaguered sinew. Prince makes work for and about the everyman, and in this way is the quintessential American realist.