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Appropriation, Richard Prince, and the art of stealing images
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In the early 1980s, whilst working in the cuttings department at Time-Life Inc., the artist Richard Prince began developing a series of photographs which came to be known as Untitled (Cowboys). It was during this time, as he rifled through the pages of American weekly magazines, that Prince started to get hooked into the visuals of the Marlboro cigarette ads. These adverts depicted scenes of cowboys on horseback wearing boots, leather chaps and Stetson hats, wielding lassos as they rode through the Western wilderness. They represented an idealised image of macho American masculinity, one which values adventure, freedom and self-reliance. It was one of the great 20th century advertising campaign successes, and Prince was fascinated by the illusion of these alluring images.
After cutting out the editorial columns, Prince was left with a pile of adverts which he took home from work. He stuck them on his…
