Artist Richard Prince emerged in the 1980s after spending several years in the tear sheets department at Time Life magazine, where he re-photographed popular advertisements to compose his own brand of visual language, essentially remaking what had already been made. Today, Prince has become one of the most consummate painters of our time, a sensuous colourist who creates works that are both peculiar and resonant with the familiar. Best known for his series of Marlboro cowboys, naked nurses, muscle cars, and low comedy joke paintings, Prince is perhaps less well known for his ardent bibliophilic tendencies and as a collector of Pop and American counterculture materials dating from 1949 to 1984. A 2011 exhibition at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris will mine his vast interests, combining popular and rare books selected by the artist from the collection of the Biblioth?que Nationale, as well as highlights from the artist's personal library, on public view for the first time.This is not an exhibition catalogue but an accompanying "reader" that expands upon the presentation at the Biblioth?que Nationale. Literary excerpts complement illustrations of artworks, showing the influence of the texts and Prince's book collection, which contains many rare volumes, among them Naked Lunch annotated by William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac's rolled manuscript for Big Sur, Prince's vast collection of pulp fiction, and editions of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. American Prayer is a palimpsest of Prince's intellectual explorations revealing the source material for many of his well-known series. Three new illuminating essays address various aspects of Prince's book collecting by exhibition curator Robert Rubin; Marie Minssieux-Chamonard, the contemporary and rare book curator at the Biblioth?que Nationale de France; and rarebook expert John McWhinnie.
