Richard Prince

James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922 edition, one of 100 copies, inscribed to Henry Kaeser, in custom leather case, collection of the of the artist, photograph Richard Prince

 

What connects the artist who gave us entertainers, cowboys, nurses, and Hells Angels with their girlfriends to the hallowed turf of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France — the library of kings, repository of French culture, and the stomping ground of Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, and other titans of Eurocentric critical theory? C’est evident. Books are a huge influence on Richard Prince’s art. Not just what’s in books, textually speaking. Prince makes art out of books, out of parts of books, and even out of the detritus of the publishing industry. He also happens to own one of the finest collections of late-modern Americana — first editions, manuscripts, letters, and inscribed copies of Nabokov, Southern, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Salinger, Capote,…