Sampling the globe

ArtForum, Oct, 2004 by Daniel Birnbaum

"The pictures I went after, 'stole,' were too good to be true," says Prince. Is his art a critique of the commodification of our desires or a cynical affirmation of that process which also forces the viewer into voyeurism and complicity? Whereas Murakami, say, seems to have misunderstood Warhol's remarks on monotony and now floods the market with meaningless and boring art, Prince consistently produces work that, at its best, emulates Warhol in ambivalence and dangerous attraction. His series of Marlboro men, "Untitled (Cowboy)," ongoing since 1980, not only displays the typical ambiguity--fascination or critique?--but would seem to have slowly accrued significance over the years. Unlike fellow artists who have widened the range of material appropriated to become more "global," Prince has basically kept doing the same thing--yet the perception of his work has slowly changed, and the pictures now seem more political. An icon of early-'80s art and that era's interest in the simulacrum, the Marlboro series has by now become in effect a portrait of the last superpower ("spiritual America" indeed); Presented at the 2003 Venice Biennale, the cowboys fully conveyed the powerful attraction and repulsion of US supremacy. This, I thought, is an artistic statement wholly comparable to Warhol's "Death in America" series, and it is unrivaled today in sheer force and unbearable geopolitical self-confidence. Neo-Pop? A repetition on the level of the symptom or a return of the traumatic Real? Posterity will tell.

Director of the Stadelschule art academy in Frankfurt, contributing editor Daniel Birnbaum also heads the institute's Portikus gallery.