Wow, has it really been twelve years? This rasfotos picture is one of Richard Prince’s New Portraits that broke through the static and really made people think, “WTF, is he actually doing this? Instagram screenshots??“
Seeing it again after so long, and after so much art chatter, social media mayhem, and legal wrangling, it really does feel like if he wasn’t everything for making these works, Richard Prince was definitely something.
The voluptuous photo, the bafflingly intense comments [“The fight for earth doesn’t end until one of us is gone?” What even is that?], the austere composition, this really could only have been made twelve years ago, minus five days. Art is a fascinating thing.
[next morning update] as Alan points out on social media, Sean Fader, whose social media performance was appropriated here, turned it into more work, including an #artselfie background. Remember #artselfie?
And being sold, I think, by Bloomberg commodities commentator-turned-energy-industry-flack Alix Steel. We’re all truly standing an inflection point for our culture.
23 Sept 2026, Lot 199, Richard Prince, Untitled (Portrait), 2014, est. $25-35,000 [update: sold for $23,040, practically a steal][ragoarts]