Gagosian Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2010

Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Richard Prince Photographs, December 2001 - February 2002, p. 88, illustrated in color
New York, Gagosian Gallery, Richard Prince: Collection, May - June 2010

This work is in excellent condition overall. The print is mounted verso to the backing board in the top two corners. Framed under Plexiglas.
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"Oceans without surfers, cowboys without Marlboros...Even though I'm aware of the classicism of the images I seem to go after images that I don't quite believe. And, I try to re-present them even more unbelievably." Richard Prince

Richard Prince’s iconic Cowboy series, conceived in the early 1980s, initiated a new subversive and postmodern approach to the production of art. By appropriating and re-contextualizing the alluring images found in vintage Marlboro cigarette advertisements, Prince questions the concepts of authorship and originality traditionally tied to unique works of art. Untitled (Cowboy) from 1989 is a prime e🦩xample of Prince’s ground-breaking appropriationist teꦫchnique and his persistent engagement with mass consumer culture.

In 1974 Prince was working for Time-Life magazine and clipping editorials to assist the staff writers’ research. He found himself drawn to the leftover advertisements and the familiarity of their imagery which we often take for granted. He began re-photographing the found advertisements through his own inquisitorial lens and removing tag lines and slogans so only the aesthetic splendor of the images remained. Prince’s engagement with advertising and consumer culture was symptomatic of a larger art world trend, embodied by the ‘New Image’ movement of which he was a part. Emerging out of New York Citﷺy in the late 1970s, New Image art embraced and cultivated a revitalized cultural unity between mass media and fine art. Among his contemporaries in what is now known as the Pictures Generation—Cindy Sherman, Richard Longo, Jack Goldstein and Sherrie Levine—Prince was and continues to be the most engaged with the power of advertisement.

The Marlboro cowboys have been the most persistent source of inspiration throughout Prince’s remarkably varied artistic output. As the quintessential American folk hero and the premier icon of American identity, the universality of the cowboy makes him the perfect vehicle for Prince’s oppositional photographic practice. In Untitled (Cowboy), Prince has cropped🌞 the image to isolate the protagonist in the warm grasses and surroundꦗing herd of cows. We are seduced by the seeming simplicity of the composition and the sense of masculinity and perseverance evoked by the lone cowboy’s solitude. It is an image steeped in the historical conscious of America and notions of the American dream. 

While no longer associated with the Marlboro advertisement from which it came, the present work remains an image originally conceived to implicitly connect with its audience and communicate a message. The potency of Untitled (Cowboy) rests on Prince’s ability to undermine the sincerity and contrived familiarity of the source image. He exposes the fantasy of the lone ranger and scrutinizes the shallowness of the ideals to which advertising appeals. As explained by Rosetta Brooks: “By rephotographing commercial images that were clearly made-up fictions for selling products to the public, Prince, acting as fine artist, makes originals that are more authentic than the originals. He takes control of an already controlling (deliberately manipulative) image” (Rosetta Brooks, ‘A Prince of Light or Darkness’ in: Rosetta Brooks, Jeff Rian, Luc Sante, eds., Richard Prince, London 2003, p. 38).