“The initial reaction (mine included) to the paintings has often been “Basquiat.mes ets Dubuffet.” Indeed, they are so distant from the Pictures Generation’s photo-based ethic that they all but join forces with its ’80s adversary, Neo-Expressionist painting…Mr. Prince has never made anything quite so much fun to look at.”
B ased on his eponymous early Hippie Drawings, Richard Prince’s Untitled from 2019 is an otherworldly and dynamic assemblage of vibrantly colored, exuberant creatures. Exploding with rhythmic plasticity, the present work is abundant with spontaneous, gestural marks that speak to the immediate engagement of the artist. A kaleidoscopic portrait of bewildering and exotic figures, the present work is rendered in sumptuous hues of exuberant green, midnight blues and and vibrant yellows, as a group of Jean Dubuffet-esque art brut figures dominate the canvas upon a seemingly spray painted graffiti style background. Here biomorphic forms, replete with Jean-Michel Basquiat inspired anatomy, transform and swell into gigantic, elongated limbs; a cumbersomely angular and primitive translation of the human form that is at once endearing and grotesque. Speaking to Prince’s energetic figuration, Brian Droitcour states:”they multiply and overlap, ricocheting against each other in manic, artistic ecstasy.” (Brian Droitcour quoted in “Richard Prince,” Art in America, February 1, 2019, (online))
Prince continues to be an avid collects or and perceptive chronicler of American subcultures and vernaculars and their role in the construction of American identity. The High t.mes s series, of which Untitled is a part, expands the artist’s vocabulary of appropriated material beyond commercial or popular imagery. First initiated in 1998 when Prince produced a series of drawings based on what he thought a hippie would draw. Revisiting these early drawings, Untitled is thus a deft continuation of or perhaps, appropriation of, his own oeuvre as the artist prints scans of these drawings onto the canvas overlapped by liberally and gesturally applied acrylic and oil stick. Untitled thus stands as a celebration of appropriation and modification within Prince’s explorative oeuvre.
