Richard Prince

Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Through April 7

Organized into groups of similar portraits depicting young actors, singers, and models, the signed publicity photographs of such celebrities of American popular culture as Naomi Campbell, Jennifer Lopez, and Gwen Stefani, are the most recent additions to the “publicity series” by New York-based artist Richard Prince. Prince has been known for the past twenty-five years as an “appropriation” artist, amassing images from magazines and collectible stores, re-photographing them, and exhibiting them as his own, and this recent project continues in this vein.

At once critical and campy, Prince’s exhibition showcases the glossies of some of Hollywood’s brightest stars, but instead of simply appropriating these photographs, he forges the signatures on an unidentified handful of them, and exhibits them within the gallery space. Calling into question the constructed fantasy of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Prince’s inquiry examines the cult of celebrity without necessarily debunking its myths.

Typically, publicity photos are meant to capture the essence of their celebrity’s most marketable characteristic and propagate it ad infinitum. As a result, one might find the same traits recurring throughout the genre, and Prince exploits this fact. Particular camera angles or poses with the widest appeal—as determined by a recognizable boost in record sales, box office returns, and ticket sales for promotional tours—are eventually employed by everyone, and all the photographs begin to adhere to certain stylistic conventions.

These are the means through which Prince deftly “categorizes” the supernatural vixens (Lucy Lawless of Xena: Warrior Princess), the sci-fi idols (Edward Furlong of Terminator 2, Jeri Ryan of Star Trek: Voyager), the sexy crime fighters (Peta Wilson of television’s La Femme Nikita), the teen princesses (Britney Spears), the cult heroines (Christina Ricci), the muscle-bound beefcakes, and so on.

Yet by editing and remixing these photographic fictions in this manner, Prince aims to discredit their glossy and pretentious Hollywood chic. Unfortunately, he does so without necessarily complicating this gesture. After twenty-five years of cataloging and research, one would think that his mode of criticism could be more cunning.




Alena Williams