Untitled (Portfolio of Twelve Prints) | Harvard Art Museums

Identification and Creation

Object Number: 2006.10.1-12
People: Richard Prince, American (Panama Canal Zone born 1949)
Arber & Son Editions, American
I. C. Editions, Inc.
Title: Untitled (Portfolio of Twelve Prints)
Other Titles: Series/Book Title: Untitled (Portfolio of Twelve Prints)
Classification: Prints
Work Type: portfolio
Date: 1991
Culture: American
Persistent Link: https://hvrd.art/o/11300

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Twelve lithographs housed in a black cloth box with embroidered "skull bunny"

Technique

Lithograph

Dimensions

box: 41.8 x 30.7 cm (16 7/16 x 12 1/16 in.)
sheet: 38 x 28 cm (14 15/16 x 11 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

Signed: each sheet signed on verso in graphite pencil: RP
stamp: lower left of colophon, compression: chop of Arber & Son Editions
inscription: verso of each sheet, graphite pencil, signed, in artist's hand: RP
inscription: colophon, graphite pencil, signed, in artist's hand: 24/26 R Prince 1991

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

Edition: 24/26

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Margaret Fisher Fund
Copyright: © Richard Prince / I. C. Editions, Inc.
Accession Year: 2006
Object Number: 2006.10.1-12
Division: Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact: am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
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Descriptions

Commentary: As in much of his other work, Richard Prince explores issues of masculinity in this portfolio of twelve lithographs. Each print comprises a smattering of texts and images: some fragmentary, some fully realized, some drawn on the stone, some transferred from other sources. Prince's hand-written texts tell jokes, the kinds of raunchy, yet classic jokes allegedly told among men. The prints are an extension of his painting practice. In the late 1980s, Prince began a series of joke paintings that critics have related to the humor and cartoon imagery featured in men's magazines like Playboy. In fact, the portfolio box that contains the prints the prints is decorated with a Playboy bunny on its cover. Yet although Prince deploys such iconic signifiers of masculinity as the bunny and dirty traveling salesmen jokes, the picture of masculinity he conjures is a confusing questioning one. In fact even the Playboy bunny is manipulated-it's given a dangerous-looking set of teeth. Included among the texts are affirmations of male homosexuality, certainly a subject taboo in men's porn magazines. The print publisher Susan Inglett claims that the drawings for the prints were made after prince and his wife separated and he was engaged in a homosexual affair. Whatever his personal stake in the imagery is, the prints examine masculinity in a sensitive, smart, and unusual way.

Publication History

[Unidentified article], Print Collector's Newsletter (January - February 1992), Vol. XXII No. 6, p. 213

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Verification Level

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