{"id":44100,"date":"2009-04-29T20:22:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-30T00:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/?p=44100"},"modified":"2018-10-19T20:22:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-20T00:22:21","slug":"richard-prince-high-times-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/?p=44100","title":{"rendered":"“Richard Prince: High Times” Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First there were the \u201cdead\u201d heads. (Nothing to do with the Grateful Dead.) Drawn with a Bic pen back in 1972 and \u201973. Richard brought these heads with him to NYC when he moved there in 1974. There were about twenty of them. They were drawn from the heart. \u201cThey were probably the first things I did that ever had any soul.\u201d But when Richard reached NYC he wasn\u2019t interested in anything to do with feelings, especially his own. He wanted nothing to do with himself. He wanted to change places with someone else, even just for a day. Just to see what it would be like to be someone else.<\/p>\n

Someone else\u2019s shoes.<\/p>\n

He knew the heads were the real thing, but he didn\u2019t want the real thing. He wanted something realer. Realer than real. A very real real that was a kind of \u201cvirtuoso real.\u201d He put the heads away and started living inside other people\u2019s shoes. For twenty years he lived in a lot of shoes.<\/p>\n

Next came the\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>.<\/p>\n

1998.<\/p>\n

He had moved out of NYC by then and had kids, and the honesty that he saw in the drawings that they were making reminded him of his own heads from back in \u201972 and \u201973. But he wasn\u2019t ready to make something with his own blood. That\u2019s how he explained it: \u201cwith my own blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

So after digging his kids\u2019 drawings, he got to thinking of making drawings based on what he thought a hippie would draw. The \u201cbasing\u201d (the direction, deflection, substitution . . . whatever you want to call it) was a way he thought he could \u201cget away with\u201d . . . and, at the same time, \u201cget out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>\u00a0that he started making in 1998 and continued to draw for the next couple of years were supposed to be shown in London in early 2000. But, for reasons he can\u2019t explain, he canceled the show and instead just published the catalogue. \u201cAt least you had reproductions of the drawings. I was always thinking about the idea of \u2018at least\u2019 and \u2018almost\u2019 all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s what he did. Almost. And at least.<\/p>\n

The gallery he was supposed to show the\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>\u00a0with ended up publishing a book of the\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He put a self-portrait of himself on the cover, from 1968, when he had long hair and a beard. \u201cYeah, I kind of looked like a hippie, but I wasn\u2019t a hippie. The portrait was about looking, not being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up, de Kooning.<\/p>\n

In 2004 Richard received a de Kooning catalogue from LA MOCA that Paul Schimmel put together. Richard was spending the summer out east, close to de Kooning\u2019s studio in the Springs. Richard didn\u2019t have a studio. So he took the catalogue and sat in a chair and ripped into it. He \u201chippified\u201d it.<\/p>\n

Some of the de Kooning drawings in the catalogue reminded him of his own\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>. De Kooning had style. Richard didn\u2019t. So he used his hippie \u201cpose\u201d and de Kooning\u2019s style, mashed the two together, and started drawing directly in the de Kooning catalogue.<\/p>\n

Filled the whole thing up. A new head. A new arm. A leg. He even drew the word \u201cHIPPIE\u201d on the cover. He collaged body parts onto de Kooning\u2019s women. He turned some of de Kooning\u2019s women into men. (The \u201cturn\u201d was what he called \u201cmy contribution.\u201d) The contribution was a way of connecting to de Kooning\u2019s women. The connection changed de Kooning\u2019s women into a kind of hybrid. A new gender. Inclusive. All things body. Everything at the same time. Men and women. Women and women. Men and men.<\/p>\n

He says he can\u2019t remember the circumstance or why, but he sent the hippie de Kooning book back to MOCA. There was talk about buying it. But they didn\u2019t. They passed. \u201cHippie de Kooning\u201d was returned and Richard put it away.<\/p>\n

A bunch of years went by, and as years go by, books have a way of hanging around.<\/p>\n

High Times<\/em>\u00a0calls.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is\u00a0High Times<\/em>\u00a0magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n

High Times<\/em>\u00a0magazine called to ask if Richard wanted to do a cover. Something about an anniversary cover. Twenty-fifth anniversary? He doesn\u2019t remember the exact number. But they wanted to know if he could give them some\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>\u00a0for a July cover. Richard was surprised. How did\u00a0High Times<\/em>\u00a0know about the\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>? The hanging-around book.<\/p>\n

The only thing Richard knew about\u00a0High Times<\/em>\u00a0was that his friend Glenn O\u2019Brien used to be the editor. \u201cEditor at large.\u201d Glenn coined the term. Richard had never looked at or paged through a copy of the magazine. He wasn\u2019t even aware that it was still being published. \u201cYeah,\u201d they said. \u201cBigger than ever. Pot is everywhere. And if it isn\u2019t, it will be.\u201d They wanted to use five different\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>\u00a0and put out five different covers. Richard went with it.<\/p>\n

A year after\u00a0High Times<\/em>\u00a0. . . Q-Tip.<\/p>\n

Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest visits.<\/p>\n

Q-Tip asks Richard if he wants to illustrate the Tribe\u2019s new album cover. The Tribe hadn\u2019t put out an album in eighteen years. And Q-Tip wanted a\u00a0Hippie Drawing<\/em>\u00a0for the cover. The bell rings again. How did Q-Tip know about the\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Got to be the book. The hanging-around book. If there\u2019s some other explanation, all Richard will say is \u201cbeat hippie punk.\u201d Yeah, I know\u2014it\u2019s not even an explanation.<\/p>\n

A year to a year and a half later, A Tribe Called Quest\u2019s\u00a0We Got it from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service<\/em>\u00a0comes out.<\/p>\n

Richard can\u2019t stop playing it. Continued rotation. \u201cThe rhymin\u2019 noodle.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the middle of\u00a0High Times<\/em>\u00a0and the Tribe, Richard was working on a body of work he called\u00a0Super Group<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Super Group<\/em>\u00a0started off simple. One day Richard removed a 33 1\/3 rpm record from its sleeve. He held the sleeve in his hand and stared at it. It was paper. It was square. It was foxed. It was yellowed at the edges, and had a hole in it. Even on its own it had inherent meaning. Without thinking Richard took a pencil and signed the sleeve: \u201cTo Richard Hell from another Richard Hell.\u201d It was quick. No thought. No intent. Not much of anything. Just reaction. Instant memorabilia. Richard signed the sleeve, framed it, and hung it in his studio. It hung there for a year. After a year of walking back and forth in front of it, Richard went through his record collection and found nine Sonic Youth albums. He removed all the records from their sleeves and gridded and pasted the sleeves with white acrylic paint onto a canvas. He called the painting\u00a0Nine Sonic Youths<\/em>. This is a correct title. It\u2019s an accurate title. An accurate description. More of that realer-than-real.<\/p>\n

The different \u201caging\u201d of the nine sleeves reminded him of Agnes Martin. Not exactly the same, but the look of the painting had that soft minimal off-white tone of Martin\u2019s paintings.<\/p>\n

The next one was the Kinks.<\/p>\n

Sixteen.<\/p>\n

Sixteen Kinks<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Richard said he had only three Kinks records in his collection, so he had to go to a used record store to get some more. That changed things. What it changed is going to a used record store. One, he started going more. And two, he wasn\u2019t buying records for the record but for the sleeve the record is in.<\/p>\n

Richard started referring to this body of work as the\u00a0Sleeve Paintings<\/em>. It was an okay title, but not a really good one.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward.<\/p>\n

Six months after discovering he could buy all kinds of record sleeves on the Internet (as the\u00a0Sleeve Paintings<\/em>\u00a0start to get bigger, this made using sleeves as a background a lot easier than going to a used record store and carting home a shopping bag full of records), Richard came up with the name\u00a0Super Group<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He had started writing the names of bands directly onto the sleeves. Writing out the names of groups like Cream and Blind Faith, groups that he grew up with, reminded him of the term used to describe what these two groups were supposed to be:<\/p>\n

SUPER GROUP.<\/em><\/p>\n

This was better than\u00a0Sleeve Paintings<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Super Group<\/em>\u00a0was lucky. Another lucky title. Another good title. Another nonfiction title. It fit with what he was making. The fit was perfect. \u201cPerfect is true. Perfect is art.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2016 Richard made a painting of four figures that he called his own\u00a0Super Group<\/em>. The painting was based on his early\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>. The four figures were a made-up band, but \u201cmaking up\u201d was something Richard was still having trouble with. \u201cMaking up is always trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the next summer he was still writing the names of bands on sleeves but he also started adding small hippie-like drawings to the sleeves. The combination of sleeves, names, and drawing made it to Berlin in September 2017, where he had a show called\u00a0Super Group<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After returning from Berlin he stopped writing the names of bands on sleeves and then stopped using sleeves, but he kept on drawing and painting the hippie figures.<\/p>\n

Back in 1998 you couldn\u2019t own your own inkjet machine.<\/p>\n

But this was 2017.<\/p>\n

And every artist he knew had their own machine, and so did Richard.<\/p>\n

The Jet Generation.<\/p>\n

Richard started to make inkjet reproductions of his 1998\u201399\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s got to start somewhere. And that\u2019s where it started. He was appropriating himself. He didn\u2019t put it that way. But that\u2019s the way I can put it.<\/p>\n

His old became new by using new technology.<\/p>\n

You can inkjet on almost any surface . . . paper, canvas, linen, cloth. You can scale what you feed into the jet, big or small. It gives you a head start. The printed image can be redrawn, drawn over, added onto, or collaged with other drawings. A new painting can be rephotographed and that new painting can be fed back into the inkjet and you can print it out and start over. Change it. That\u2019s what jetting is good for. Change. And you can do it quickly. The jet spits out the image on canvas in the morning and by the afternoon with nothing but an oil stick you can mark a new eye, nose, and mouth, and have a whole new painting.<\/p>\n

High Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Calling these new paintings\u00a0High Times<\/em>\u00a0made sense. It was an open title. \u201cOpen-ended.\u201d The title was a lifetime of experiences. And besides, someone had already put that title on five of his\u00a0Hippie Drawings<\/em>. It wasn\u2019t like Richard thought it up.<\/p>\n

Fun.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was fun making these paintings. \u201cOr at least I thought it was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Richard finally told me. And he told me wasn\u2019t sure if he\u2019d ever had fun making art.<\/p>\n

He couldn\u2019t recall if the emotion or the point of view of \u201chaving fun\u201d had ever entered into his past experience of making art.<\/p>\n

And if it wasn\u2019t fun, so what?<\/p>\n

It was true. And if it wasn\u2019t true, the feelings were true.<\/p>\n

Feels good. Something was good again.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m even pretending.\u201d<\/p>\n

And not pretending he was cool with.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I was cool with that. It was time. It was time to go back, remind . . . circle back to the \u2018dead\u2019 heads and do something that I was born to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCheck it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0High Times<\/em>\u00a0are him.<\/p>\n

\u2014Joan Katz<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gagosian Gallery<\/em>, 522 West 21st St, NYC, 212-741-1717,\u00a0November 1\u2013December 15, 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First there were the \u201cdead\u201d heads. (Nothing to do with the Grateful Dead.) Drawn with a Bic pen back in 1972 and \u201973. Richard brought these heads with him to NYC when he moved there in 1974. There were about twenty of them. They were drawn from the heart. \u201cThey were probably the first things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[1751,8162,8161,836,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44102,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44100\/revisions\/44102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}