Richard Prince, Norm Clasen, and Some Healthy Theft
In 2005, Richard Prince became the first artist to sell a photograph for over $1m at auction. And this was no ordinary photograph: 1989’s “Untitled (cowboy)” was a photograph of a photograph, taken from a Marlboro cigarette advertisement. Prince belongs to the family of appropriation artists, people who “claim,” in whole or in part, existing artistic works, re-presenting them often with little to no alteration. Works like “Untitled” go beyond remix; they are exercises in wholesale replication. As such, its audience must interrogate what it means to transform a work through a piece whose artist attempts to obfuscate that answer as much as possible.
Which is all well and good as an artistic choice until it nets you millions, at which point the artists you took from come knocking. And who can blame them? Norm Clasen, one of the photographers for the original Marlboro shoots, is seething with rage over what he sees as unbridled theft. To Clasen, any artistic merits one could ascribe to “(cowboy)” only serve to uphold the validity of the theft. Prince “got away with it,” says Clasen, because “he came up with sort of a social statement.” But what Clasen (understandably) misses are three things: that Prince does not owe the success of his work to Clasen; that regardless of artistic intent, the social repercussions of “Untitled” remain; and it is precisely these repercussions that have been assigned a worth of $1.25 million. The auctioners did not bid on Clasen’s photograph, they bid on Prince’s. And it’s a subtle distinction, but it makes a world of difference.
Clasen’s work is immaterial to the creation of the Cowboy series because there is nothing important about the images Prince chose; he specifically rejects dialogue with his source material. As Prince reveals in 2007’s Brian Appel-conducted “Money, Paint, and Jokes — An Interview with Richard Prince,” his goal for the Cowboy series was to examine the metaphysics of creation, transmission, and alteration. In response to Appel’s comment on how Prince’s work feels “vintage” despite being a copy, he explains it as the result of careful attention to presentation and framing, with the intention of making his prints look normal — “normality,” to Prince, “is the next special effect.” Furthermore, his choice to use Marlboro photographs didn’t relate to any sort of social statement; “the commodification subtext” has “never been an issue for [Prince].” So, if Prince sought to use existing photos simply because they existed, then there is nothing particularly important about Clasen’s contribution as the original photographer. The piece is not meant to be examined for what it is, but for what it becomes when you apply external mental frameworks to it. This can be communicated regardless of what the pre-existing image is. But even if one chose to integrate the content of the “(cowboy)” photograph into their understanding of Prince’s piece, theft is not necessarily the obvious conclusion.
When considering Prince’s work with respect to Clasen’s, the distinction between the two’s lie in their difference in priority: specifically, Clasen’s piece is an advertisement, and Prince’s is not. In his 2007 essay “The Ecstasy of Influence,” novelist Jonathan Lethem explains why advertisement art is inherently unaffecting, asserting that while markets only consider things in the context of a transaction, buying and selling art is more about the act of transaction — specifically, of gifting the work — itself, creating a “feeling-bond” between buyer and seller. Thus, “it may be possible to destroy a work of art by converting it into a pure commodity” because the work loses its ability to transmit emotion between people. The original purpose of Clasen’s contracted work is, unequivocally, to sell cigarettes. Prince, meanwhile, specifically cropped corporate references from the Cowboy series. If conventional criteria for artistic transformation must be applied, then this is it: not only does the Cowboy series have a different emotional tenor than the Marlboro advertisements, but it has the ability for people to experience it as art, as a gift from its creator to them, in a way that its source never can.
But even if one were to concede that there is no significant difference between the two works, Clasen is still not necessarily entitled to a portion of auction profit because, in a sense, the acquirer bought the idea that comes with “Untitled,” not the physical blowup itself. If one simply wants to own a picture of the Marlboro man, one could simply purchase the image that came with the advertisement, even crop and enlarge à la Prince. What is special about Prince’s particular copy is the effect that only Prince’s iteration achieved: its prior existence in the Guggenheim, its cultural fallout, and all the social contexts surrounding this specific photograph are what makes “Untitled” a compelling piece. Purchasing a Norm Clasen advertisement gives one access to a pretty piece of corporate art; purchasing “Untitled (cowboy)” 1989 gives one access to history, controversy, mystery, and contradiction; and so is purchasing one of Clasen’s pieces from his “Titled (cowboy)” series, an installation intended to reclaim his pieces from Prince. “Titled” is no less valuable than “Untitled;” it continues the history of the pieces. But it is a fundamentally different artistic statement than “Untitled,” which in itself grants artistic meaning to a meaningless advertisement. There is certainly room for all in the world.
Works Cited
“Money, Paint and Jokes — an Interview with Richard Prince (2007).” AMERICAN SUBURB X, 8 Dec. 2019, https://americansuburbx.com/2013/03/interview-richard-prince-2007.html.
Lethem, Jonathan, et al. “The Ecstasy of Influence, by Jonathan Lethem.” Harper’s Magazine , 2 Dec. 2012, https://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/.
Hughes, Holly. “Photographer of Marlboro Ads Exhibits Photos Richard Prince Copied.” PDNPulse, 5 Mar. 2018, https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2018/03/photographer-marlboro-ads-exhibits-photos-richard-prince-copied.html.
Prince, Richard. Untitled (Cowboy). 1989.
Salawich, William. “Norm Clasen: Reclaiming the Untitled Cowboy.” American Photographic Artists, 23 Mar. 2018, https://apanational.org/inspiration/entry/norm-clasen-reclaiming-the-untitled-cowboy/.
