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Here’s Why Richard Prince’s Instagram Portraits are Brilliant – and Misunderstood

May 28, 2015 by Dan Redding 2 Comments

The artist Richard Prince has created a series of portraits that has totally pissed off and confounded the public (for many artists, this would be victory number one). The series of ‘portraits’ are really just printed versions of other peoples’ Instagram photos. Prince’s pieces are priced at $90k. The Instagram comments sections include comments written by Prince – kind of the artist’s postmodern, digital signature on each piece (see bottom of this post for gallery photo).

The show has created controversy and dialogue surrounding two important subjects: ownership and value of artistic content in the digital era. This dialogue is victory number two for Prince’s series.

As if to underline the misunderstanding of Prince’s intentions, one of the original Instagram photographers is selling her original work for $90, as if that’s a bargain. This is to totally miss the point. First of all, she’s not selling a Richard Prince. Prince is a world-famous fine artist who has a 40-year career of appropriating imagery. And that’s the most important point: Prince’s work performs the classic Warholian Pop Art trick of taking a mundane, everyday image (an otherwise value-less Instagram photo) and using context (including but not limited to authorship, gallery setting, and price tag) to elevate the item to fine art status. Therein lies the value. It’s no different than Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans. Prince could’ve used anyone’s photos, and to sell the original Instagram photo itself is to remove the context and miss the point.

So like we're some fancy NYC art now? I'm just imagining hipsters all drinking wine and having intellectual conversations in front this photo @chavezwho took of @sabbbrre and I last year, stolen straight from my Instagram page. Idk man kinda trippy…

A photo posted by Lucid Suicide (@lovelightlucid) on May 14, 2015 at 7:45pm PDT

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Filed Under: Artists, Featured Writing

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Comments

  1. Wilda says

    February 19, 2016 at 2:31 am

    It is truly a nice and useful piece of info. I’m happy that you just shared this useful
    information with us. Please stay us up to date like this.

    Thank you for sharing.

  2. Don says

    February 16, 2017 at 11:44 pm

    Trouble is, a “classic Warholian trick” is only really “classic” if Warhol himself was doing it.

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