print Summer 2011

ARTISTS ON AB-EX:

EI ARAKAWA

Gutai is often considered the starting point for postwar art in Japan, typically described as a response to American Abstract Expressionism (via Pollock, who first exhibited in Japan in 1951) and as a parallel to French art informel (via Michel Tapié). However, I want to point out two earlier collectives of midcentury Japanese art (pre-Conceptual On Kawara aside): Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop)—an avant-garde art, music, and theater collective that was influenced by the Bauhaus and European Surrealism—and Zero-kai (Zero Society), whose member Kazuo Shiraga had already

print October 2004

Richard Prince

I CAME TO NEW YORK CITY IN 1974. IN NEW YORK CITY IN 1974 Andy Warhol was the fastest gun in town. In 1990 I wrote on a painting, ANDY WARHOL WAS A FUCKING ASSHOLE AND SO WERE ALL HIS FUCKHEAD FRIENDS AND I'M GLAD HE DIED. When I wrote it I was thinking about the movie The Gunfighter, starring Gregory Peck. Later that year I was asked, “Is it Mr. Prince versus Mr. Warhol, or is it Richard loves Andy?” I answered the question the same way the clown did when asked, “I heard you just married a two-headed lady—is she pretty?” He said, “Well, yes and no.”

The noes: Andy wore a silver wig, and I shave

print October 2003

IN MY MOVIE

When Artforum invited Richard Prince to contribute a writing project in tune with his visual work, the artist looked to his ongoing series of “nurse paintings” and to a recent photo shoot with Kate Moss—and created this dreamscape screenplay that extends his signature reframing of mass-media iconography.

Two drunks wandered into a zoo and stopped in front of a lion’s cage. They stood watching the animal for a few minutes and suddenly it let out a roar. “C’mon let’s go,” said one. “Go ahead if you want to,” said the other. “I’m gonna stay for the movie.”

In my movie there’s a cowboy, a nurse, a

passages Summer 2003

Colin de Land

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, and I was standing, freezing, outside American Fine Arts, Co., when a shiny new purple pickup truck arrived with its ferocious cargo: The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. Naked save for a coat of brightly colored body paint, seven band members leaped from the vehicle and paraded into the packed gallery for their performance. Inside the space, visitors were greeted by a photo in which bandleader Kembra Pfahler was seen prancing on a bed with another naked body—that of Colin de Land, the proprietor of American Fine Arts, painted completely blue and topped with a

print March 2003

1984: World of Video

WORLD OF VIDEO OPENED UP on the southeast corner of Twenty-first Street and Second Avenue in New York on November 10, 1984, according to my diary. It was one of the first stores in the city to rent movies, and I think I was its first customer: I lived eleven stories up in the same building in a one-bedroom apartment, house-sitting for a friend who had recently gone to Los Angeles to make videos for a new show called MTV. She had left behind a VCR and a giant TV that had been hooked up to cable and HBO—four things that were still pretty rare at the time. In that Orwellian year, she was my Big

print December 1993

FIRST HOUSE: A PROJECT FOR ARTFORUM

When I first met Richard Prince, in 1985, he was living in a suburban tract house in Venice, California. He had two noisy muscle cars splotched with patches of primer paint that he prowled around town in, two male roommates I never laid eyes on, and a tiny little room of his own. In the closet in his stark white cell was a wardrobe of black and white clothing carefully selected for maximum anonymity. Next to his bed was a stack of magazines—Parakeet Fancier, Low Rider, and other oddball stuff. There were barbells in the den, baloney in the refrigerator, and a curved sectional sofa hugging a

print December 1987

the Traveling Salesman

THE TRAVELING SALESMAN'S CAR broke down one evening on a lonely road and he asked at only farmhouse in sight, “Can you put me up for the night?”

“I reckon I can,” said the farmer, “but you’ll have to share a room with my young son.”

“How about that!” gasped the salesman, “I’m in the wrong joke!”

SO THEN THE UBIQUITOUS TRAVELING salesman said to the farmer, "Can you put me up for the night?”

Whereupon the farmer said, “Sure, but you’ll have to sleep with my son.”

“Good Lord,” said the salesman, “I’m in the wrong joke!”