Richard Prince Transcript

Richard Prince: When you go to something as vast as the Guggenheim’s collection, you start to see patterns.

Narrator: When artist-curator Richard Prince started exploring the museum’s art storage for his presentation, Four Paintings Looking Right, he was already interested in lesser-known Abstract Expressionist artists. As he looked through the collection, he discovered a surprising number of commonalities among paintings made between the 1940s and early 1960s, many created by such artists.

Richard Prince: I found 30, 40, 50 artists who all kinda were doing the same thing, and some I had never heard about. I did start to notice this style, and I think what I would call this kind of ubiquitous type of rendering. And it was not just American. It was also European and Japanese. There was this sort of, like agreement or consensus.

Narrator: You can discover these formal echoes when comparing, for instance, the shapes that look almost like scaffolding on canvases by Georges Mathieu, Martin Barré, and Judit Reigl. Prince has a personal connection with the period: as a very young artist, he tried to emulate the style of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Jackson Pollock.

Richard Prince: When I grew up, when I was like a teenager in the basement, I remember painting, like, helicopters that were done throwing paint on the canvas.

Narrator: Today, Prince is interested in blurring the lines between creating art and collecting it.

Richard Prince: Collecting, for me, it’s the same thing as a plein-air painter going out to a field and selecting a tree to paint. Basically he’s collecting that tree, he’s making a decision. I don’t see really that there’s that much difference. And I do like to have the work of other artists around me, not just my own.

Narrator: Prince’s presentation for this exhibition reflects the way he brings together collection and creation. Whether he is choosing paintings or rare books for his own holdings, Prince’s primary focus is on what shaped the making of each item.

Richard Prince: I like the idea of artists who have stories. I’ve always liked that, whether it’s literature, or cinema, or a painter. What kind of story do they have?

Narrator: Among the works from his collection that exemplify this focus are two paintings—one all black and one largely red—by Stuart Sutcliffe, the original bassist for the Beatles, who died at age 21. Sutcliffe studied painting with Eduardo Paolozzi, whose work is also part of the Guggenheim’s collection.

Richard Prince: Stu Sutcliffe was a friend of John Lennon, and John Lennon asked him to be the bass player before the Beatles were famous. Stu Sutcliffe was an art student. His heart was more in the painting world than in the musical world.

Narrator: Another work from Prince’s own collection that appears here is a painting thought by some to be by Jackson Pollock, but it has never been authenticated. This small, textured, black-and-red painting had no certifications or documentation when he acquired it, though it had once belonged to the artist Mercedes Matter, who knew Pollock well.

Richard Prince: After Mercedes Matter passed away, her son found a package in storage. There were 34 or 37 Pollock paintings. At the time, you know, there was all this talk about, well, there’s no certification. And I didn’t understand, why did everybody talk about what they found in storage as being not Jackson Pollock paintings?

Narrator: This mystery about the painting’s authenticity made the piece compelling to Prince, who has experimented with the concept of forgery and appropriation in his own work. He chose to include Pollock’s square drip painting, Number 18, from the Guggenheim’s collection, as a revealing source of visual comparison. As for the “Matter” Pollock, he is still intrigued by its background.

Richard Prince: I didn’t care if it was worth ten dollars, or ten million dollars. What interested me was the story again. It’s a story.