Richard Prince talks to Steve Lafreniere - '80s Then - Interview

STEVE LAFRENIERE: You weren't in Douglas Crimp's "Pictures" exhibition, but a lot of people seem to think you were, maybe because of your later association with Helene Winer, who was at Artists Space before starting Metro Pictures. Did you feel a kinship to the artists in the "Pictures" show?

RICHARD PRINCE: I've never said this before, but Doug Crimp actually asked me to be in that show. I read his essay and told him it was for shit, that it sounded like Roland Barthes. We haven't spoken since. I didn't know anybody in the show at the time. I later became friends with Troy Brauntuch. I still like his work.

SL: What you read didn't ring true in terms of what you were doing?

RP: I guess that in those days I didn't particularly understand the relationship between artist and critic, and I didn't care to establish any relationship. Critics tried to tell you what you were doing, and wanted you to make the kind of work that they were thinking about. I probably resented that. I had a similar argument with Craig Owens. We had a difficult exchange and I ended up not talking to him. But I more or less had feelings about what they were describing. We were on parallel roads.

I also didn't understand Crimp's choices. There were a whole bunch of people who could have been in that show, like James Casebere and Jim Welling, or Laurie Simmons and Sarah Charlesworth--but none of them were, and that didn't make sense to me. There didn't seem to be any photography.

SL: Did not being in the show end up affecting your career?

RP: Well, like you said, people seem to think I was in it. People think Cindy Sherman was in it too. I don't know who really ever read that essay. Those shows and essays are for other critics. So I don't know what affects a career. I do know that I would continually change what I did, which didn't help in the beginning, but did in the end.

SL: I'd always assumed that you purposely made your early photos have an amateur look, and that you'd done them quickly. But looking at them today would suggest otherwise. How worked-on were pictures like Untitled (three women looking in the same direction) [1980]?

RP: I had limited technical skills regarding the camera. Actually, I had no skills. I played the camera. I used a cheap commercial lab to blow up the pictures. I made editions of two. I never went into a darkroom. And yes, I really worked hard on Women. I mean, that piece still looks like it was purposely made.

SL: So you sort of fell into photography?

RP: In the early '80s I didn't have the subject matter for painting. I didn't have the "Jokes" until 1986. What I did have was magazines. I was working at Time Life and was surrounded by magazines. I wanted to present the images I saw in these magazines as naturally as when they first appeared. Making a photograph of them seemed the best way to do it. I didn't exactly "fall" as much as steal.

SL: The cliche is that the dealers were all-powerful then. But what about the collectors?

RP: I think certain collections are powerful. I saw one in 1987, at the Merino's in Monaco, where they placed a big Thomas Ruff next to a "Big Nude" by Helmur Newton. They were leaning against the wall. It made me change my mind. In the early '80s, to be collected by Charles Saatchi was another way to be included, to be part of what was happening. To be in instead of out, or so it seemed at the time. Anyway, I was "left out." Nobody bought my early work. I couldn't even give it away.

SL: You don't have such great memories of the collectors.

RP: The Rubells gave pretty good parties. Michael Schwartz started collecting in the mid-'80s, concentrating on about ten artists. I remember one woman collector asking me who "anon." was. She was surprised she didn't know him or her, because they seemed to be listed in a lot of collections. The best thing about being collected is getting money.

SL: Do you think the critics understood what you were doing?

RP: I wasn't aware that there was much critical writing in the '80s about my work. I think people were more focused on David Salle, Schnabel, Fischl, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer.

SL: Well, I remember one person gushing about your work's "complete eventlessness."

RP: That sounds like cartoon language. Kind of like when Susan Sontag describes taking a photograph as "a soft murder."

SL: Longo, Schnabel, Sherman--they've all made movies. I've often wondered why you haven't.

RP: I'm not very collaborative. I like being alone. Working alone. I hate actresses. I don't like having to ask permission. A green light is not something I'd be happy waiting for.

SL: What films back then had an impact on you?

RP: The Road Warrior. First Blood. Alien. Drugstore Cowboy. The Terminator. Did Blade Runner come out in the '80s? If it did, I liked that one--the original, not the director's cut.

SL: In your novel Why I Go to the Movies Alone, there's this notion of "counterfeit memory," the media landscape replacing personal history. Has that idea panned out?

RP: Do androids dream of electric sheep? Virtual reality. Cloning. Sampling. Substitutes. Surrogates. Stand-ins. It's either here or right around the corner.