An eagerly awaited survey on Richard Prince, showcasing a remarkable collection of his most iconic works alongside never-before-seen pieces from his groundbreaking career. Richly illustrated, the book delves into Prince’s exploration of appropriation, authorship, celebrity, and American identity. Known for his transformative use of found imagery--whether from advertising, pop culture, or Americana--Prince has redefined the boundaries between original and reproduced, public and private, art and commerce. His work continues to challenge how we view mass media and contemporary life. As the first major survey of his work in years, <Upstate, Uptown< is both a retrospective and a timely reexamination of Prince’s legacy. Featuring rare photographs and essays by leading art historians, it offers invaluable insight into his lasting impact, making it the essential companion to his solo exhibition at Museo Jumex.

Autorentext

Foreword by Eugenio López Alonso, Texts by Kit Hammonds, Rita Ackermann, and Sydney Stutterheim

Klappentext

An eagerly awaited survey of Prince presents a striking collection of his most iconic works alongside rare, never-before-seen pieces from his groundbreaking career.

This is a major volume on the influential American artist Richard Prince, tracing more than four decades of his pioneering practice—from his early experiments in the late 1970s to some of his most recent works. Widely regarded as one of the most provocative figures in contemporary art, Prince has continually challenged ideas of authorship, originality, and cultural ownership, redefining how images circulate and acquire meaning in modern visual culture.

The book accompanies a landmark exhibition at Museo Jumex, the first major survey of the artist’s work presented in Latin America. The exhibition title echoes a joke Prince has returned to throughout his career—originally attributed to Milton Berle: “I went to my psychiatrist. He said, ‘Tell me everything.’ Now he’s doing my act.” Like the joke itself, Prince’s work operates through repetition, appropriation, and reinvention.

The volume explores two foundational threads in Prince’s practice: his pioneering “rephotography” of appropriated advertising imagery and his works based on jokes and cartoons. These themes unfold through in-depth presentations of his celebrated Cowboys and Jokes series, revealing how Prince has reshaped the visual language of popular culture for more than forty years. Alongside these bodies of work, the publication examines other key series that probe fiction, masculinity, and the mythology of American identity.

Richly illustrated and thoughtfully contextualized, this authoritative publication explores how Prince’s work reflects the ways in which commercial imagery both shapes and responds to a particular psychology of the United States in the twentieth century.