Richard Prince Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine; $90,000 Prints offered for $90
May 28, 2015
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Richard Prince has been in the headlines lately after being accused, once again, of stealing other peoples’ work and selling it as his own.
Prince’s latest controversial “art” is basically a series of screenshots of various Instagram photos, along with the uploader’s name and some of the comments. In order for the work to be considered his own, Prince added a comment to the original photo – and voila! The magic of appropriation in its most embarrassing moment.
The so-called ‘face’ of the story has been blue-haired Doe Deere, but while she has stated she will not “go after him”, another party involved in this disgraceful incident has decided to take action, and in the most appropriate way.
One of the ripped-off photos belongs to SuicideGirls, and its founder Missy announced yesterday that they’re fighting back by selling prints of Prince’s appropriated work for just 0.1% of his selling price.
I guess you could call it re-appropriation.
Following the influx of questions, Missy shared her thoughts about Prince capturing and selling a series of SuicideGirls Instagram posts:
“My first thought was I don’t know anyone who can spend $90,000 on anything other than a house. Maybe I know a few people who can spend it on a car. As to the copyright issue? If I had a nickel for every time someone used our images without our permission in a commercial endeavour I’d be able to spend $90,000 on art. I was once really annoyed by Forever 21 selling shirts with our slightly altered images on them, but an Artist?
Richard Prince is an artist and he found the images we and our girls publish on instagram as representative of something worth commenting on, part of the zeitgeist, I guess? Thanks Richard!
I’m just bummed that his art is out of reach for people like me and the people portrayed in the art he is selling”.
Offering a solution to the problem, Missy announced that SuicideGirls will sell “the exact same prints people paid $90,000 for $90 each”. “Beautiful Art, 99.9% off the original price”, she added, and I absolutely love this idea!
To make things even better, SuicideGirls will be donating the profits to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit organization with the promising slogan “defending your rights in the digital world”.
Obviously SuicideGirls can’t sell the ‘exact’ prints as they would be violating Prince’s copyright, so they did what he did and added a comment of their own. Each of SuicideGirls’ posts turned Richard Prince “art” turned SuicideGirls art has the comment “true art” added under Prince’s own comment.
Prince received plenty of criticism not only for the lazy work he’s done, but also for the fact that he did not receive permission from the people whose photos he used nor did he inform them of him doing so.
This raises the question whether SuicideGirls in turn approached Prince for his permission, to which Missy brilliantly replied “we have the same permission from him that he had from us. ;)”.
While I understand Doe Deere’s decision not to take action against Prince, she had the opportunity to try and make a change with her one million social media fans and followers and the media’s attention that was directed her way.
Hopefully SuicideGirls, with a social media following ten million strong, will be able to get the ball rolling on this matter.
So far Prince does not seem fazed by the criticism, but I eagerly await his response to this latest move.
Am I bothered by idiots & morons? Naw. Reading the only copy of Ted Kaczynski's auto-biography. Just 1 copy. Now there's a crackpot.
— Richard Prince (@RichardPrince4) May 23, 2015
Like I said, I’m a big fan of SG’s re-appropriation, but I’d like to see someone take Richard Prince to court over his “New Portraits” series.
Should that fail, perhaps the next step should be to appropriate the rest of Prince’s work.
UPDATE: Richard Prince has tweeted a response to Missy Suicide’s $90 prints:
Much better idea. I started off selling my "family" tweets for $18 at Karma not to long ago. Missy Suicide is smart. pic.twitter.com/3OfjgNBq4a
— Richard Prince (@RichardPrince4) May 28, 2015
[via New York Times | h/t: Tiffany Mueller]
Liron Samuels
Liron Samuels is a wildlife and commercial photographer based in Israel. When he isn’t waking up at 4am to take photos of nature, he stays awake until 4am taking photos of the night skies or time lapses. You can see more of his work on his website or follow him on Facebook.
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20 responses to “Richard Prince Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine; $90,000 Prints offered for $90”
Good the guys a prize CUNT !
Yea, cuz he cares. Somebody needs to kill that asshole.
Yes! Great idea to put him out of business. Cut out the middleman.
However I do want to find the people playing millions for screenshots of twitter and punch them right in the face.
Yeah, no…. oops. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/37hzrn/i_am_missy_suicide_founder_of_suicidegirls_artist/
lol what a fail
Prince immortalized these photos and created them into Pop-Art. Thinking outside the box artistically shouldn’t be treated as an egregious crime against other artists. Princes installation made this a conversation in a ton of different social circles. Good on him for getting the word spread
… really? … well he could have done all that going about it correctly.. and how about paying royalties to the real artists who did the work in the first place? Without them… he’d have nothing.
The actual photo has very little to do with this work. Unless what you’re saying is, without other artists (en total) he’d have nothing, which I suppose is true. But the same could be said about any artist and their subject matter _______ (or “the world” in general, which would encompass all artists).
Correctly or incorrectly, the artist made you feel a certain way enough to comment on it. Warhol never payed a dime to campbells soup or coca-cola, under parody law, how is this any different?
Thieves make us ‘feel a certain way enough to comment on it.’ What’s your point. I’ve done appropriation, this is just theft.
Warhol did not lie and say he created the Campbells soup label.
Comparing Prince to Warhol is shitting on one of the greatest 20th century artists.
Warhol created compositions using pop imagery and icons as symbols of modern culture. Way different than this shit.
Warhol didn’t sell advertisements he stole from the street as his own work. He actually painted them (or someone in his studio did). That is the difference.
Obviously you’re not an artist yourself even if you say you are you obviously don’t value your work
Your argument can be fairly summed up as, “if you’re famous it’s okay to steal other people’s work because you’ll give it more exposure.” That’s just weak.
Immortalized my ass. He stuck his name on them and that’s all. He conceptualized a rip off. He composed nothing. He created nothing. He said nothing. This behavior devalues the art that those of us who put the time, money, sweat, and heart into. Us artist who are out there trying to covey our vision are being slapped in the face and laughed at by this.
So technically this article maid me feel this way and it is now art.
It would be better if these photographers would get together and do a class action…while I do get the point they are making..it just continues the..if I change your art just a bit it is mine…not the message we need to be sending to image thieves,imo.
Boom!! Karma b*tch!!