RICHARD PRINCE: American Prayer, Gagosian Gallery / Rizzoli, New York, 2011

Exhibition catalogue, Gagosian Gallery, New York / Rizzoli International Publications, 2011. Illustrated softcover; 600 pages including preliminaries; 16.5 × 23 cm; extensively illustrated in colour and black and white. Edited by Robert Rubin. Texts by Robert Rubin, Marie Minssieux-Chamonard and John McWhinnie. Designed by COMA, Amsterdam/New York. ISBN 978-0-8478-3649-9.

Condition: good; general rubbing and light surface marking to the white covers, with minor creasing and wear at the edges and corners. Interior pages appear clean in the areas inspected.

Published following Prince’s American Prayer exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, 29 March–26 June 2011. Rather than presenting a conventional survey of his artworks, the exhibition drew upon Prince’s private library: rare books, manuscripts, letters, paperbacks and material associated with Beat, hippie, pulp and punk culture.

Prince developed his practice through the reuse of existing images, texts and cultural identities. In American Prayer, collecting becomes another form of appropriation. Books are photographed in stacks, rearranged through subject and association, and placed alongside snapshots, artworks and printed fragments. The distinction between what Prince owns, what he selects and what he makes is left deliberately unstable.

At almost 600 pages, the publication operates less as an exhibition catalogue than as a portable version of the library itself. A private collection is transferred into an institutional exhibition and then returned to circulation as a mass-produced book. The object is particularly relevant to the histories of artist collecting, secondary images and the reclassification of printed matter.

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