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Richard Prince

High Times

May 30–August 23, 2019
San Francisco

Installation view Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Richard Prince. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Works Exhibited

Richard Prince, Untitled, 2019 Collage, acrylic, oil stick, and inkjet on canvas, 121 × 90 inches (307.3 × 228.6 cm)© Richard Prince

Richard Prince, Untitled, 2019

Collage, acrylic, oil stick, and inkjet on canvas, 121 × 90 inches (307.3 × 228.6 cm)
© Richard Prince

About

First there were the “dead” heads. (Nothing to do with the Grateful Dead.) Drawn with a Bic pen back in 1972 and ’73. Richard brought these heads with him to NYC when he moved there in 1974. There were about twenty of them. They were drawn from the heart. “They were probably the first things I did that ever had any soul.” But when Richard reached NYC he wasn’t interested in anything to do with feelings, especially his own. He wanted nothing to do with himself. He wanted to change places with someone else, even just for a day. Just to see what it would be like to be someone else.

Someone else’s shoes.

He knew the heads were the real thing, but he didn’t want the real thing. He wanted something realer. Realer than real. A very real real that was a kind of “virtuoso real.” He put the heads away and started living inside other people’s shoes. For twenty years he lived in a lot of shoes.

Next came the Hippie Drawings.

1998.

He had moved out of NYC by then and had kids, and the honesty that he saw in the drawings that they were making reminded him of his own heads from back in ’72 and ’73. But he wasn’t ready to make something with his own blood. That’s how he explained it: “with my own blood.”

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News

Richard Prince: High Times (New York: Gagosian, 2018)

Online Reading

Richard Prince
High Times

Richard Prince: High Times is available for online reading from July 5 through August 3 as part of the From the Library series. Published on the occasion of the eponymously titled exhibition at Gagosian, West 21st Street, New York, in 2018, the book includes reproductions of Prince’s latest paintings alongside his earlier Hippie Drawings that serve as their main sources. Integrated among these fascinating images are recent essays by the artist; reprints of historical texts by Eve Babitz, Joan Didion, and Kim Gordon; and a new essay by Rachel Kushner. Plastic inserts throughout the book house postcards, facsimiles of ephemeral materials related to 1960s culture from Prince’s personal collection, and a seven-inch recording of Prince’s 1985 composition “Loud Song.”

Richard Prince: High Times (New York: Gagosian, 2018)

Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017–18 © Richard Prince

Tour

Richard Prince
High Times

Saturday, June 1, 2019, 3pm
Gagosian, San Francisco

Join us for an in-depth look at Richard Prince’s new High Times paintings at Gagosian, San Francisco. Engaging with the city’s historic counterculture and the tradition of American painting, these large-scale works are laden with colorful figures layered upon the canvas. Gagosian’s Graham Dalik will discuss the origins and evolution of these paintings, their connection to Prince’s earlier Hippie Drawings, and the artist’s long-standing interest in many of the literary and cultural figures associated with the Bay Area. To attend this free event, RSVP to sftours@gagosian.com. Space is limited. 

Richard Prince, Untitled, 2017–18 © Richard Prince