Question 1

True or false: Prince once claimed that all his art is original because he 'makes' images by recontextualizing them.

Accepted Answer

True. He famously said, 'I’m not a photographer; I’m a thief,' defending appropriation as a creative act.

Question 2

True or false: Richard Prince has never worked with text or written jokes in his art.

Accepted Answer

False. He's famous for his 'Joke Paintings'—text-based works featuring crude, often sexist one-liners on canvas.

Question 3

True or false: Richard Prince's 'New Portraits' series involved taking screenshots of Instagram posts and exhibiting them as his own artwork.

Accepted Answer

True. Prince took screenshots of Instagram posts, often selfies, added his own comments, and displayed them as large canvases at Gagosian Gallery, selling some for tens of thousands of dollars.

Question 4

True or false: Richard Prince once rephotographed a Marlboro ad and sold it for over a million dollars.

Accepted Answer

True. In 2005, Richard Prince's 'Untitled (Cowboy)'—a rephotograph of a Marlboro ad—sold at Sotheby's for $1.2 million, a record for a photograph at the time.

Question 5

True or false: Prince's 2014 'New Portraits' exhibition consisted entirely of screenshots of other people's Instagram posts.

Accepted Answer

True. He printed enlarged Instagram photos, adding his own comments, sparking debates about authorship and consent.

Question 6

True or false: The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a complete set of Prince's 'Cowboy' series from the 1980s.

Accepted Answer

False. No museum holds a complete set; the series is scattered across private collections, with key works at MoMA and the Whitney.

Question 7

True or false: Richard Prince studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design before becoming a conceptual artist.

Accepted Answer

False. Prince never attended art school; he worked for Time-Life and learned by rephotographing magazine ads.

Question 8

True or false: Prince's first solo exhibition featured original paintings of nurses, not appropriated images.

Accepted Answer

False. His first solo show in 1980 featured rephotographed ads from magazines, not nurse paintings—that series came later.

Richard Prince Trivia Questions