That's America, for Richard Prince

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

We have already discussed Richard Prince in the group Current Art (in French only in May 2008), about his series of Nurses. The artist, working with reprographic printing processes, produces works of great size inspired by covers of cheap books showing nurses.

In photography, he is best known at auction for his series of Cowboys, also in very large formats, which divert publicity imaging.

We see for the first time at auction a C-print, 237 x 190 cm, from the series Spiritual America, title of an exhibition he had made in New York in 2007. This print made two years earlier resulted from a collaboration with photographer Sante D'Orazio and marked the "reunion" of Prince and Brooke Shields.

We remember that Brooke had scandal in movies when playing the role of a child living in a brothel in the Louis Malle film "Pretty Baby" in 1978. In 1983, Prince held his own success when fraudulently diverting a 1975 publicity photograph on which Brooke was naked. He lost the case made against him by the actual photographer.

On the image that Phillips de Pury will sell on June 29 in London, the actress, 40 years old in 2005, is standing, wearing a string bikini, her feet hidden by a white fog of nitrogen according to the fashion of stage photos of rock and roll. This work, too recent for finding a reference price, is estimated 400 K £.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

Richard Prince seems to no longer entertain the art market, of which he is one of the "enfants terribles". This trend affects even the photos he is trying to promote as contemporary icons: the image of Brooke Shields remained unsold.