Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present Richard Prince: de Kooning an exhibition of paintings and works on paper. This coincides with Richard Prince: American Prayer at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, an exhibition of American literature, ephemera and artworks from Prince’s personal collection. Prince’s “de Kooning” series is a process of interaction with the canonic imagery of the Abstract Expressionist idol Willem de Kooning. The idea for these edgy Oedipal works came to him when he was leafing through a catalogue of de K... Read more

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present Richard Prince: de Kooning an exhibition of paintings and works on paper. This coincides with Richard Prince: American Prayer at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, an exhibition of American literature, ephemera and artworks from Prince’s personal collection.

Prince’s “de Kooning” series is a process of interaction with the canonic imagery of the Abstract Expressionist idol Willem de Kooning. The idea for these edgy Oedipal works came to him when he was leafing through a catalogue of de Kooning’s Women series. He started sketching over the paintings, sometimes drawing a man to de Kooning’s woman. As time went on, he began applying fragments of male and female torsos, genitalia, thighs, and facial features, cut and pasted from catalogues and vintage porn magazines, as well as drawing with graphite and oil crayon, adding outlines, silhouettes and textures to the original figures that further blur the distinction between de Kooning’s imagery and Prince’s own.