Are you sophisticated enough to appreciate this properly?
Richard Prince: the coolest artist alive - Telegraph
Take, for example, one of Prince's best-known works, the 1989 Ektacolor photo of a cowboy galloping under blue skies across a wide open plain with a lariat in one hand, horse and rider caught in the split second before they thunder out of the camera's range.
If you didn't know what you were looking at, you'd take the picture to be a defining image of the spirit of the American West, with all that implies about tough-guy machismo, personal freedom, and God's own country.
In fact, what Prince did was to "re-photograph" an advertisement for Marlboro Lights, but removed the picture of the cigarette pack, the advertising copy ("The spirit of Marlboro in a low tar cigarette"), and the Surgeon General's health warning.
With a click of a button, then, Prince magically created an original artwork out of an existing photo taken by somebody else....It dispels the illusion that the original was intended to create, because anyone sophisticated enough to go to an art gallery to see it wouldn't believe a single thing about it - that it shows a real scene, that it features a real cowboy, that the West is now, or ever was, really like that. In fact, nowadays the image would probably make us think of the original Marlboro men who died of lung cancer, or even of the film Brokeback Mountain.
Well that is me told then, I didn't think of Brokeback Mountain, in fact I try never to, nor about some old actor coughing his guts up - no I'm so unsophisticated that I thought "of the spirit of the American West, with all that implies about tough-guy machismo, personal freedom, and God's own country." And I'm proud of that.
Comments
Broke-what? I was thinking it's kinda grainy, and usually you try to show the quarry he's chasing too...and I think they call that an appaloosa horse, with the spots like that.
Posted by: DirtCrashr | July 16, 2008 12:47 AM
After listening to Terry Wogan's riotous mickey taking of "Barebum Mountain" I couldn't be arsed to go an see it myself ;-)
Posted by: Doctor Mick | July 16, 2008 5:08 AM
I thought it was the sort of photo I take - reactions not quick enough to centre the subject in the middle of the picture. Should I exhibit my extensive collection of blurred aircraft tails and claim I had captured their essential speed and power?
Posted by: Gallimaufry | July 16, 2008 9:46 AM
Broke Back, Mountin'
Posted by: Harbinger | July 16, 2008 6:49 PM
I think we can be proud that we just see a cowboy on a horse and not some sort of Brokeback swayback from wayback.
Out here on the great plains, we call these speckled horses 'Roans'. This one is what we call a blue roan, there are reddish or 'strawberry' roans as well. Here's an an old cowboy song about a strawberry roan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3BkHtlSYR4&feature=related
The Appaloosas you mentioned have spots on their back/rump/legs but not on their chest and neck. Roans, pintos (with larger spots/patches of color) and appaloosas are all fine horseflesh.
Posted by: texascarl | July 20, 2008 12:46 AM