Purple Magazine
— F/W 2014 issue 22
Richard Prince
“NEW FIGURES” at galerie 1900-2000
text by JEFF RIAN
When Richard Prince showed his “New Figures” in Paris at the gallery 1900-2000, it was the first time for both him and the gallery. The coy name calls to mind serious art and serious history, but the images come straight out of ’50s and ’60s sex magazines, before the mass porn industry. He scans the pictures and covers them up (censors them?) with his own erotic drawings, which reanimate the original picture, before rescanning and printing them on quality photographic paper. Sometimes the photographs are tinted pond-water green or washed-out pink. He draws in a modern style that recalls Picasso or Matisse (a talent he isn’t known for but has always had).
Richard Prince flooded Instagram with these “New Figures,” and Instagram regularly tried to censor them, even though they are widely available on the Internet and carefully reprinted as artworks in this issue.
