ART OF THE STEAL
Celebrated painter & fotog Richard Prince sued by lensers who say he swiped their work
ARTIST Richard Prince has done album covers for Sonic Youth and A Tribe Called Quest; ranks as a darling of influential collectors such as Marc Jacobs, Peter Brant and Charles Saatchi; and until recently was repped by Larry Gagosian’s namesake gallery. He even collaborated with Louis Vuitton on a line of watercolor-print handbags.
But depending on whom you ask, Prince, 68, is either one of the world’s greatest artists or a stone-cold thief.
Making bank through provocation, the New Yorker has worked to create that division — and has the legal issues to prove it. So much so that his pal, “Spring Breakers” filmmaker Harmony Korine, has said, “For Richard, the lawsuits are also the artwork.”
It’s a good thing, since Prince currently finds himself up to his neck in them.
As put by Christopher Davis, one of the lawyers litigating against him, Prince is “a notorious appropriation artist who has made tens of millions of dollars over the course of his career by reproducing, modifying and preparing derivative works of others, typically without permission . . . ”
The current spate of lawsuits — four of them — are all related to 2014’s “New Portraits” show, originally mounted at Gagosian. Works in the exhibition depicted pictures of regular folk and stars — including Kate Moss and Pamela Anderson — plucked via screenshot from Instagram accounts, printed by Prince on canvases and tweaked with written comments from Prince.
For decades, Prince has mostly been able to sidestep other artists who felt wronged by his usage — free-expression laws afford a wide berth for adapting the visual work of others — but that trend may be reversing. In July, United States District Judge Sidney H. Stein shut down a request for dismissal of a suit from professional photographer Donald Graham, whose work was appropriated by Prince in “New Portraits.”
Graham said that he pursued legal recourse for himself and hopes to set a standard that will aid others. “Copyright is a foundation for photographers to make a living,” he told The Post.
Prince’s lawyer, Joshua Schiller, insisted: “We’re saying that it’s fair use.”
Bryan Wheelock, a partner at Harness, Dickey & Pierce, one of the country’s oldest intellectual property law firms, fails to see it that way, however: “Wrapping an Instagram heading around somebody else’s photograph, I don’t see how that is transformative. [Prince] had initial success, and I think it has emboldened him.
“He is a copyright infringer.”
LACKING traditional art training — the artist once admitted to Artforum, “I had limited technical skills . . . Actually I had no skills” — Prince’s career began after he moved from his childhood hometown of Boston to Manhattan in 1973 and got a job in the library at Time Inc. There, he snipped and archived magazine pages, foreshadowing his later work.
He started getting modest art-world attention in the late 1970s and early ’80s for pieces such as spot-on reproductions of cigarette ads. In 1983, Prince re-photographed a 1975 shot of a naked 10-year-old Brooke Shields and called it “Spiritual America” (the title was copied from an Alfred Stieglitz photo). It was first shown in the front window of a Lower East Side store rented by Prince for this single purpose.
Garry Gross, the shot’s original photographer, won a $2,000 settlement from Prince and an agreement that he would be credited every time the appropriated version was shown at the Whitney — a promise Prince reneged on in ’92. (After Gross pointed it out, Whitney employees credited him.)
In 2014, Prince’s copy of Gross’ photo sold at auction for $3,973,000.
At least Gross got something. Sam Abell fared less well when Prince, in 1989, “re- photographed” (Prince’s words) a Marlboro ad — originally shot by Abell in the 1970s — that depicted the brand’s famous cowboy.
“His appropriation of my photo was the lead image at MoMA,” Abell told The Post. “The whole thing was surreal and turned the world on its head for me.”
Prince’s image, called “Untitled (Cowboy),” sold for $701,000 at Sotheby’s in 2014. Abell had relinquished all rights to Philip Morris (the tobacco brand’s parent company), so he could not seek compensation, nor could fellow Marlboro photographers — and Prince targets — Jim Krantz and Jim Braddy.
Abell joked that, thanks to Prince, a dream of his came true: “I had a lifetime ambition to have a show at the Museum of Modern Art.” But, he added, “People talk about his work and the photo they use is mine. It has been a barnacle in my life.”
In 2002, Prince began creating his now famous “Nurse” paintings, based on images appropriated from the covers of midcentury pulp novels. The originals were by journeyman illustrators such as Mort Engle, whose illustration for the book “Millionaire Nurse” inspired a Prince painting of the same name which sold for $3.301 million at auction in 2014.
To be fair, Prince did make his nurses look more mysterious than the book-cover originals by covering the lower halves of the women’s faces. The alteration arose by accident; after wiping excess paint off a piece, Prince was left with what resembled a surgical mask.
One canvas in the series, “Nurse of Greenmeadow,” went for $8.6 million back in 2015.
DESPITE apparent similarities, Prince relies on a legal doctrine known as “fair use” that deems artistic appropriation permissible so long as the new work includes a “new expression, meaning or message,” a complex concept that can be difficult to disprove.
With the exception of five (out of 30) photos that French photographer Patrick Cariou sued Prince over — earning an out-of-court settlement in 2014 — Prince has managed to get away with it.
But the most controversial of Prince’s audacious appropriations has led to the lawsuits that just might pierce his seemingly Teflon armor.
The artist’s “New Portraits” show was comprised of canvases emblazoned with printed portraits of model Candice Swanepoel and singer Sky Ferreira, among other celebrities, as well as people you’ve never heard of. Some were selfies; others were taken by professional photographers.
New Yorker magazine art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote that his response to the work was “something like a wish to be dead.” Artforum headlined its review, “Richard Prince Sucks.” Still, collectors snapped up the works at $90,000 each.
Three pro photographers are now pursuing lawsuits for copyright infringement. Dennis Morris claims a photo he shot of Sid Vicious was pilfered by Prince, while Donald Graham is troubled over use of his “Rastafarian Smoking a Joint.” Eric McNatt’s shot was of former Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon — a close pal of Prince’s.
The fourth litigant is Ashley Salazar, a makeup artist; Prince used one of her selfies, which she copyrighted after the fact.
“He used her work, without her authorization, to make a profit,” her attorney, Douglas Linde, told The Post. “That is against the law.” Linde, who originally filed court papers for Salazar and Morris in California, then pulled them, said he will re-file in New York “imminently.”
“I don’t know why Richard Prince thinks he can get away with using other people’s pictures. His attitude flies in the face of copyright law,” Linde added.
“Usually a defendant blames somebody else. Prince is not claiming that his assistant made a mistake. He takes full responsibility.”
SO does Prince create art, or mere reproduction? Though he may be more audacious than most, he’s following an elusive tradition that goes back at least to 1917, when Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal — not of his own creation — for an art show.
Michael Hort, a Manhattan art collector who has “a couple of” Prince’s “Nurse” paintings, shows little sympathy for the litigants.
“Richard’s art is great and original; you look at his pieces and think about them,” Hort said. With the “Nurse” paintings, “[he] took books that are completely discarded and made [their covers] into something original. You look at the nurse and wonder what she is about.
“[Prince] appropriates these images and elevates them.”
Kembrew McLeod, a communications professor at the University of Iowa who specializes in copyright, has mixed emotions. “What Richard Prince does is valid,” he said. “While I would defend Prince’s ability to ap- propriate, I find what he does to be a form of trolling.”
In fact, Prince seems to love being a troll. In January, days after President Trump’s inauguration, the artist said that he had returned a $36,000 payment to Ivanka Trump — his way of “denouncing” an artwork he had previously sold to her. The irony is that the work, which is part of the “New Portraits” series and depicts an Instagram photo of Ivanka getting her hair and makeup done, was commissioned by its subject, too.
And the artist seems to have a good sense of humor about people trolling him. After Prince exploited an Instagram image by pinup collective SuicideGirls — of a tattooed and topless female dipping her tongue into a cat-food bowl — the group retaliated by knocking off Prince’s knockoff and selling the pic for $90 instead of $90,000.
“We sold 8,000 of them and gave the profits to [digital-rights group] Electronic Frontier Foundation,” said SuicideGirls cofounder Sean Suhl. “Richard Prince responded. He sent us one of his $90,000 prints, signed, with a note saying that we were clever and that he appreciated our sense of humor.”
PRINCE, who is married to the artist Noel Grunwaldt, seemingly can afford to give away some of his work. He reportedly is worth around $30 million and owns two town houses in Manhattan, a house in the Hamptons (he once reigned as club champion at the Bridge Golf Club in Southampton) and a compound in Rensselaerville, NY.
Knowing this, some of the people who aren’t comfortable with Prince’s appropriation wonder if the wronged parties’ reactions are motivated by the potential payoff.
“Some of these people probably had not even heard of Richard Prince,” said McLeod. “But it’s not surprising that they want to sue him once they find out that he is a successful artist with the money to pay off.”
Marlboro photographer Abell — who, again, was not able to sue Prince — agreed. “This is all about money. If his appropriation was taped to somebody’s refrigerator, nobody would care.”
Still, some collectors are losing interest. “Richard is taking people’s art and using it for his own,” said Asher Edelman, whose company, Artemus, finances art purchases. Edelman “used to collect Richard Prince heartily in the ’80s.” But now, he added, “I would not buy his work because of this.”
Prince appears unfazed by the heat on him. He told Vulture, “I’m not going to change, I’m not going to ask for permission ... I sometimes spend more time in my lawyer’s office than in my studio.”
And he seems to spend a lot of that time rolling his eyes. He has said of a past plaintiff ’s attorney, “My attitude was like, ‘Dude, this is my artwork and you . . . are a f- -king square.’ ”
My attitude was like, ‘Dude, this is my artwork and you . . . are a f- -king square. — Richard Prince on an attorney who represented someone who had sued him