The Fugitive Artist

“The Fugitive Artist” curated by Michael  Lobel at the Neuberger Museum

So after some 30 years, the art historian – detective Michael Lobel comes calling.  He’s fascinated with the history of Picture Art and trying to find out where it came from.  It’s been so influential in the art world for the last 30 years, so – naturally – he’s researching Richard’s early work. He’s making me remember and relive those early days when beautiful was not a bad word. Michael Lobel wanted to make an exhibition of early Richard Prince.

But there’s a big problem. Richard Prince hates Early Richard Prince. Remember, he hates his uncanny ability to make beautiful marks. I understand that. And for the record, the road of intellectual photo images that  he  took was so much more influential and eventually lucrative than the road of the hand-made that I would have had him take. He did the brilliant strategic thing and I was and am – an idiot. I can accept that.

But the art by Richard Prince I exhibited in the 70’s  was very funny, provocative and I cannot tell a lie – beautiful. I sold a number of pieces to museums and collectors. I quickly paid him when I sold something and he took the money, cashed the checks and thanked me. Now 30 years later,  he says it was all a mistake. The work I sold was not really that of the real Richard Prince.

And because Richard repudiated all of the art in this exhibition,  – some 50 pieces he made from 1975,76,77, he refused to cooperate with Michael and the  Neuberger Museum in putting together this exhibition. He called in a lawyer, and refused to allow the pieces in the exhibition to be reproduced in the catalog.  Michael brilliantly worked his way around this by having empty squares become placeholders for the works he was describing.  The exhibition was called “The Fugitive Artist” , and the catalog visually expressed that idea.

So Prince decided that he doesn’t like the more beautifully made, less cerebral art of his early career.  He seems to want to recreate his history and needs to future art historians to see him as the cynical  jokster who appears fully formed on the art scene, without history, mistakes,  previous life, or previous art.