THE LAST STAND

Richard Prince has shocked the cultural establishment again and again with norm-breaking—some say lawbreaking—conceptual artworks. But since the pandemic, he's been holed up in his Hamptons home, rarely making appearances. In an unprecedented interview late in his career, he spills to NATE FREEMAN about the surprising new series he calls Folk Songs and his six-hour film, Deposition. And for the first time, he discusses what will happen to his estate after he's gone

- 

It was a Saturday in July, perfect weather in Sagaponack, and Richard Prince walked to the door of his beach house wearing a shirt with one of his hippie drawings. He had on beat-up khakis and sneakers without socks. There was golf on the TV, paintings of flowers and birds and seashells on the walls.

Prince has been out East for a while. He got property in this secluded spot in the '90s, when he followed his friend Glenn O'Brien to the houses near potato fields. It was pretty empty then, and collectors Don and Mera Rubell had a place nearby, so they would all get lunch. Later, Prince spent summers here with his family. Boogie boards and a surfboard his kids used growing up were leaning on the deck, filthy. They didn't get to use them much anyway.

"The breaks off Wainscott Beach aren't shit," Prince said.

He wanted to bring me to the guesthouse he converted to a studio. I was excited. I'd be maybe the third person to see his first completely new series of work since 2018. It has a great name, like all his best series: Girlfriends, Hoods, Nurses, Cowboys, Jokes. These new works are called Folk Songs.

As he enters his late 70s, Prince is now the greatest living artist depicting the good, the bad, and the ugly of cultural Americana. Not quite half a century ago, he shocked the art world with brazen acts of appropriation: rephotographing the cowboys in Marlboro cigarette ads and blowing the results up into his own art, modifying the source material. Those works now sell for more than $3 million at auction, making them among the most expensive photographs in history. His paintings sell for more. In 2021 Prince's Runaway Nurse, a painting over an inkjet print of a pulp novel on canvas, sold for more than $12 million.