Watching Richard Prince Do Instagram Is Like Watching Your Dad Try to Rap

Flatbed digital serigraph on wood, 18×24 in.

Richard Prince’s New Portraits show at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue showroom this past October (2014) was a collection of images taken from his richardprince4 Instagram feed. All have been greatly enlarged (65 x 48 inches) and printed on canvas, some carrying a price tag of $100,000 or more. Many of the images he’s selected are suggestive, salacious portraits of attractive celebrities, beneath which he’s posted comments that seem to reflect an ignorance of how this particular social media platform works. This disconnect was observed by fellow artist Clayton Cubitt in a remark on his twitter account that, “Watching Richard Prince do Instagram is like watching your dad try to rap.” Peter Schjeldahl, writer at The New Yorker wrote, “Possible cogent responses to the show include naughty delight and sincere abhorrence. My own was something like a wish to be dead…” Similar sentiments formed the consensus among critics with the possible exception of Jerry Saltz, who managed to write over 1,400 words of fawning delight that did more to relate his own ignorance with the platform than to convert any Prince naysayers. In the piece above, the Instagram launch page frames Cubitt’s quote, composed of one of Richard Prince’s appropriated Marlboro Man images, making this something of an appropriation of an appropriation.