Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer who recently exhibited a body of work reflecting his two year exploration of Pablo Picasso, at the Museo Picasso Malaga. Sharing Picasso’s infatuation with the female body, the works of Prince focus on an ink-jet printed photograph of a female nude, over which he’s painted Picasso-like additions.
Many of Picasso’s later works were regarded as smutty at the time, and Prince’s women – often with a Picasso face on the back of their heads – have a real soft-porn quality to them, despite the photos originating from anatomical life drawing books.
Controversial on a number of levels, Prince / Picasso represents “another passionate episode in the traditional modernist dispute over the question of nature and the definition of art itself.” Whatever the response, Prince is able to magnify the erotic in Picasso’s work, effectively claiming it for himself and redefining the concepts of authenticity, making him one of the most coveted contemporary artists living today.