Untitled (three women with their heads cast down)

Richard Prince

1980 · Chromogenic prints · Photographs

In this work, Prince deploys an array of strategies (rephotographing black-and-white advertisments using color film, cropping, enlarging, grouping according to gesture) to undermine the seeming naturalness and inevitability of the generic mass cultural image, revealing it to be a fiction of society's desires. Whether the women are deflecting unwelcome stares or inwardly musing, Prince's triptych implicates both the artist and viewer in the play of gazes. In doing so, he describes our spectacle culture not merely as an accumulation of stereotypical images, but as an internal condition that shapes identity and defines the individual's relation to society.

Artist

Richard Prince

Date

1980

Medium

Chromogenic prints

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2000