Richard Prince - Super Group

While Richard Prince is most often discussed for his strategies as an appropriation artist-from Marlboro cowboys in the 1980s to Instagram portraits today-it is his own work as a painter that stands at the centre of his approach: starting with paintings of jokes and cartoons, following up with, among other things, nurses and cowboys taken from the covers of dime novels, and freewheeling riffs on Picasso and de Kooning. For his extensive new series Super Group, Prince uses objects loaded with meaning: the inner sleeves of vinyl records, which he collages on the canvas and then over paints with band names, abstract washes, and funny figures. The book shows 51 works, engaging with questions of our identity-after all, we define ourselves by the music we listen to. In two texts the artist explores the cultural ramifications and shares the joy of discovery: "I'd been working with sleeves on and off for four years, they weren't right, they weren't finished. They didn't have extra extra. They had a verse and bridge but they didn't have a hook. Super Group became the hook. I can stack Roy Orbison, Chuck D, Bill Evans, Patsy Cline, The Pretenders, and Lee Ranaldo on one sleeve . . . The whole sleeve can be a hit." Accordingly, this whole volume can be a hit, translating Prince's vision through images and texts into an artist's book.