W Magazine, The Art Issue, November 201019
The idea of using appropriation to address the consumption of imagery is something that was addressed in the pivotal 1977 exhibition Pictures. In the exhibition catalogue, curator Douglas Crimp noted to growing extent to which our day-to-day experience is governed by images from the media. He said: “Next to these pictures our firsthand experience begins to retreat, to seem more and more trivial…It therefore becomes imperative to understand the picture itself.”20 Crimp’s exhibition at the New York Artist’s Space used the work of artists including Sherrie Levine, Troy Bauntuch and Robert Longo to display appropriation as a new mode of representation. The exhibition has a considerable impact on the art world – it launched a new art based on the (usually unauthorised) possession of the images and artefacts of others.21
Richard Prince is an appropriation artist who is commonly thought to have featured in the pivotal Pictures exhibition, despite having no connections with it whatsoever. His work however, addresses the same issues tackled by the artists in Crimp’s exhibition. Much of his work focused on the re-photography of caption less advertisements for high end products such as perfume, fashion and watches. Interested in commodity and consumption, “Prince was treated as a social communicator whose aim was to critique commodification.”22