Richard Prince: Hippie Drawings

There are no smoking cowboys swinging their lassoes or bare-breasted blondes on heavy motorcycles in this droll collection of highly expressive drawings and watercolors. Au contraire , the inventive shapes and joyful colors recall children’s drawings or paintings by the mentally ill. Half-figures of indeterminate gender with staring eyes, big ears and frizzy hair smirk challengingly at the viewer, offering an inventory of possibilities, many of which later find their way into Prince’s joke paintings of the same period. This extraordinary little book presents these funny yet sinister works to a larger public for the first time, and allows readers to discover a new side of Richard Prince’s oeuvre.