Striking in its chromatic intensity and provocative in compositional form, Untitled ranks amongst the most exceptional works from Richard Prince’s celebrated corpus of recent paintings that engage with the canonical imagery of 20^th century art history. Endowing Prince’s homage with a graceful and rhythmic plasticity, the present work, executed in 2020, is abundant with spontaneous, gestural marks that speak of the immediate engagement of the artist. A kaleidoscopic triple portrait of sorts, the present work is rendered in sumptuous hues of emerald green, fuchsia and deep crimson, as a triumvirate of Dubuffet-esque art brut figures dominate the canvas upon a seemingly spray painted graffiti style background. Here biomorphic forms, replete with Basquiat inspired anatomy, transform and swell into gigantic, elongated limbs; a cumbersomely angular and primitive translation of the human form that is at once endearing and grotesque.

Inspired by the imagery of Abstract Expressionists and titans of the 20^th Century art historical canon, Prince began sketching and doodling over the paintings of yesteryear, using graphite and oil crayons, adding outlines, textures and silhouettes. Applying collage fragments, Prince sought to cut and paste images from such literature, catalogues and vintage magazines, embellishing the figures with facial features, body parts and limbs, building hybrid of characters. Prince further painted over the canvases in oil and graphite in sweeping gestures, resulting in intricate surface and maimed imagery manifest simultaneously as an ode to the late Abstract Expressionists and a rigorous interrogation on the mythology of American pop cultural life. Prince’s methodology is certainly discernible in the present work, as the artist divides the canvas with distinct dynamic textural layers that come together harmoniously to achieve a perfect equilibrium of art historical references.

Along with his contemporaries from the Pictures Generation of the 1970s and 1980s, Prince rose to prominence at a time when his artistic predecessors had already stripped the art-making process from its representational, durational and even material constraints. In belonging to an image-saturated and highly commercialised culture, Prince addresses the visual vernacular that characterised his generation. Faced with an abundance of pre-existing pictures, Prince “never thought of making anything new”; as he has stated, “I am very much against making anything new in a modernist approach” (Richard Prince quoted in Carl Haenlein, Ed., Richard Prince, Photographs, 1977-1993, Hanover 1994, p. 32). The artist’s manipulation of found and readymade images vacillates between a Warholian fascination with pop-culture and criticism of the myths they propagate; in the profound inauthenticity of his re-worked images and academic references, Prince critiques the excesses and opulence of an age devoted to crass materialism and illusion.

Indeed, the present work professes its myriad of sources, declaring its debt to Abstract Expressionism and creative output of the Post-War era, whilst simultaneously expressing a close sympathy with, and perhaps a nostalgia for, the grand painterly statements of Modernism. By mirroring these artists in both philosophy and technique, Prince presents a prism of refracting binaries including creation and destruction, high and low art, puritanism and mass pop culture.