Richard Prince

Know a Guy, 2000 Acrylic on canvas, 216 x 156 inches

After reading multiple interviews with Richard Prince one thing that comes across is this strange sense of humour, its so strange infact that you wonder whether it actually is humour. Prince’s joke paintings went through a developing process until his most famous prints were created. These jokes developed into primarily satirical one liners, making fun at subjects such as religion, the relationship between husband and wife and his own relationships with women. I feel that these pieces may have started as a realise for Prince, helping him to deal with his own troubles by laughing at them. The reasoning behind my own fondness to his work is the pure stupidity of the jokes, there is no doubt that these are bad jokes. Yet by presenting them as a collection it weakens ones sense of humour, and you will eventually find yourself laughing, as one is bound to crack you. Critics make the point that Prince is trying to trigger reflection on the nature of society that would consider a joke funny, but I cant help but wonder whether he just wants to make these people laugh. It is for this reason that the jokes need to be stupid, they wouldn’t break you if they were some sophisticated contemporary humour, he breaks us with the lowest jokes he can find. Rather than question the reasoning of the stupidity with a stern inquisitive look ones face, you find yourself giving in to the bad joke, allowing yourself be equal with everyone else who has previously laughed at these jokes.


I like the idea of taking information which doesn't have any deep important meaning and simply putting it our there because you want to. I feel its the small things in life which make the biggest difference and not everything has to be done to make a big difference to the world. I enjoy the idea of taking funny or random tweets from the Internet and displaying them plainly in public. I feel that by taking them out of context they may become more powerful and gain a larger reaction.

‘I had a friend who was a clown. When he died all his friends went to his funeral in one car.'