Richard Prince American, b. 1949

Richard Prince was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1949, and grew up in Massachusetts. He moved to New York in 1977 and worked at Time-Life in the tear-sheets department where he was inspired to start borrowing various pop culture media to use in his own work. By controversially reinterpreting other people’s images, he began to question the ideas of copyright and authorship, and is now regarded as one of the founders of Appropriation Art.

Intrigued by the construction of American identity, Prince draws his material from American subcultures: from classic Marlboro cowboy adverts and covers of pulp fiction paperbacks, to photos of bikers, customised cars and Willem de Kooning paintings. He turned his attention towards text in the mid-1980s, creating his ironic Jokes series that explored the taboo themes of mainstream humour.

Prince currently lives and works in Upstate New York.