RICHARD PRINCE (b. 1949, Panama Canal Zone)
'Greeting Card Joke No. 1 (Fireman pulling drunk out of burning bed...)', 2011

SIGNED Limited Edition Foil-Stamped Print

Text image from Richard Prince's iconic Jokes series. Foil-Stamped print on heavy wove paper (folded, as a greeting card). SIGNED and numbered '30/100' by artist in ink on interior of card. Edition of 100. Published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Berlin, Germany. Dimensions: 6" x 8-1/4" (folded). Excellent condition with no visible defects (never framed or displayed; shown is a framed example).

Looking like a classic Hallmark card, this greeting card features a joke handwritten by the artist: Fireman pulling drunk out of burning bed: “You darn fool, that’ll teach you to smoke in bed.” Drunk: “I wasn’t smoking in bed. It was on fire when I laid down.” Incorporating jokes reflective of the “borscht belt” humor prevalent in the 1950's, Prince's Joke works tap into social preoccupations of the national subconscious. Prior to Prince's use of the jokes, many had infiltrated popular culture, gradually losing their original authors to become adopted by a largely oral tradition.
Beginning in 1984, Richard Prince began assembling one-line gag cartoons and ‘borscht belt’ jokes from the 1950's which he redrew onto small pieces of paper. ‘Artists were casting sculptures in bronze, making huge paintings, talking about prices and clothes and cars and spending vast amounts of money. So I wrote jokes on little pieces of paper and sold them for $10 each’. Following the hand-written jokes and subsequent works in which cartoon images were silk-screened onto canvas, in 1987 Prince adopted a more radical, formulaic strategy of mechanically reproducing classic one liners and gags onto a flat monochrome canvas.
Richard Prince's work has been among the most innovative art produced in the United States during the past 30 years. His deceptively simple act in 1977 of rephotographing advertising images and presenting them as his own ushered in an entirely new, critical approach to art-making — one that questioned notions of originality and the privileged status of the unique aesthetic object. Prince's technique involves appropriation; he pilfers freely from the vast image bank of popular culture to create works that simultaneously embrace and critique a quintessentially American sensibility: the Marlboro Man, muscle cars, biker chicks, off-color jokes, gag cartoons, and pulp fiction.
Richard Prince smashed auction records in the Fall of 2005 when his Marlboro Man homage 'Untitled (Cowboy)' became the first photograph to sell for over $1,000,000. Prince is now officially an art-world heavyweight!

SELECT RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2025
'Richard Prince: Folk Songs', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY (11/6 - 12/20)
'Richard Prince: Posters', Galerie Max Hetzler, Marfa, TX (5/17 - 12/7)
'Speed Captured: The Photographic Works of Richard Prince', National Corvette Museum, Bowling Green, KY (3/7 - 12/31)
'Richard Prince: Bob Dylan', Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
2024
'Richard Prince: Early Photography, 1977-87', Gagosian Gallery New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Tell Me Everything', Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
'Richard Prince: A Book Guy', Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York, NY
2023
'Richard Prince: Early Photography, 1977-87', Gagosian Gallery Grosvenor Hill, London, UK
'Richard Prince: Freaks', Nahmad Contemporary, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Body', Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany
'Richard Prince: The Entertainers', Gagosian Gallery Davies Street, London, UK
'Richard Prince: Everyday', Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK

2022
'Richard Prince: Same Man', Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
'Richard Prince: Selections from the Karpidas Collection', The Karpidas Collection, Dallas, TX
'Richard Prince: Hoods', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Just My Luck', Nahmad Contemporary, Gstaad Airport, Switzerland

2021
'Richard Prince: Gangs', Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Blasting Mats', Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Family Tweets', Gagosian Gallery Shop, New York, NY
2020
'Richard Prince: Cartoon Jokes', Nahmad Contemporary, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: New Portraits', Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
2019
'Richard Prince: Portraits', Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), Detroit, MI
'Richard Prince: High Times', Gagosian Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018
'Richard Prince: High Times', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Early Joke Paintings', Skarstedt Gallery, London, UK

2015
'Richard Prince: Fashion', Nahmad Contemporary, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: New Portraits', Blum & Poe Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
'Richard Prince: Figures', Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Original', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: New Portraits', Gagosian Gallery, Davies St. London, UK
'Richard Prince: Cowboy', Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
2014
'Richard Prince: Canal Zone', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: It's a Free Concert', Kunsthaus-Bregenz (KUB), Bregenz, Austria
'Richard Prince: New Figures', Almine Rech Gallery, Paris, France
'Richard Prince: New Portraits', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
2012
'Richard Prince: White Paintings', Skarstedt Gallery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: 14 Paintings', 303 Gallery, New York, NY
'Prince/Picasso', Museo Picasso Málaga, Málaga, Spain

2011
'Richard Prince', Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
'Richard Prince', Gagosian Gallery, Central Hong Kong, Hong Kong
'Richard Prince: de Kooning', Gagosian Gallery, Paris, France
'Richard Prince: American Prayer', Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), Paris, France

2010
'Richard Prince: T-Shirt Paintings: Hippie Punk', Salon 94 Bowery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Tiffany Paintings', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
'Haunted: Contemporary Photographs/Video/Performances' (group exhibition), Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

2009
'Exposed! — Revealing Sources in Contemporary Art' (group exhibition), Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
'Richard Prince: After Dark', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
'Black & White' (group exhibition), Stellan Holm Gallery, New York, NY
'The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984' (group exhibition), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
'She: Works by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince', Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2008
'Richard Prince: Canal Zone', Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY
'Richard Prince', Galerie Patrick Seguin, Pairs, France
'Free Balconies' (group exhibition), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany
'Richard Prince: Continuation', Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
'Richard Prince: Four Blue Cowboys', Gagosian Gallery, Rome, Italy
'Richard Prince', Gagosian Gallery, London, UK
'Richard Prince: Spiritual America', Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

2007
'Richard Prince: Spiritual America', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
'Fugitive Artist: The Early Works of Richard Prince, 1974-77', Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY
'Richard Prince: Canaries in the Coal Mine', Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway

2006
'Richard Prince: Cowboys, Mountains and Sunsets', Galerie Sprüth Magers, Köln, Germany
'Richard Prince: Cowboys and Nurses', John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, New York, NY
'Richard Prince: Cowboys & Girlfriends', Espacio DV, San Sebastián, Spain

2005
'Richard Prince', Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK
'Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self' (group exhibition), Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA
'Likeness: Portraits of Artists by Other Artists' (group exhibition), University Art Museum, Long Beach, CA
'Richard Prince', Barbara Gladstone Gallery, NY
'Richard Prince', Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2004
'Richard Prince', Sammlung Goetz, Münich, Germany
'Richard Prince: Man', Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, Switzerland
'Richard Prince: Women', Regan Projects, Los Angeles, CA

2003
'Richard Prince', Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK
'Richard Prince: Publicities', Works from the Ophiuchus Collection, Hydra Workshop, Greece
'Richard Prince: New Work', Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, East Hampton, NY
'Richard Prince: Nurse Paintings', Barbara Gladstone Gallery, NY
'Richard Prince: Upstate', Sabine Knust, Münich

2002
'Richard Prince', Barbara Gladstone Gallery, NY
'Richard Prince', Patrick Painter, Inc., Santa Monica, CA

2001
'Richard Prince', Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland
'Richard Prince', Neue Galerie im Höhmann-haus, Augsburg, Germany
'Richard Prince', Museum Für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland
'Richard Prince', Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK
'Richard Prince', Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA
'Richard Prince', Skarstedt Fine Art, NY
'Richard Prince', Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp, Belgium

2000
'Richard Prince: Princeville', Partobject Gallery, Carrboro, NC
'Richard Prince', Barbara Gladstone Gallery, NY
'Richard Prince: Photographs, Paintings', Jablonka Galerie, Köln, Germany
'Richard Prince: 4 x 4', MAK Vienna, Austria
'Richard Prince: Upstate', MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Schindler House, Los Angeles, CA

1999
'Richard Prince', Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK
'Richard Prince', Sabine Knust, Münich, Germany

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