Richard Prince Testifies He Lied to the Press & He Bought the Rights to Use a Notorious Photograph of Brooke Shields

Richard Prince

A couple of chinks in Richard Prince’s versions of truth are emerging from documents filed with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on October 26, in addition to his having been found liable last March for infringing photographer Patrick Cariou’s copyright.  

If Prince’s sworn statements can be believed, he sometimes lied to the press, and the outlaw persona he’s peddling as an artist who just takes whatever image he wants can’t always be trusted. 

In his October 2009 deposition in the case of  Cariou v. Prince, which is currently on appeal, Prince was asked about various statements he had made to the press.  Some of those statements, he testified, weren’t true, although he preferred to describe his lying as being “creative.”  

"I Made That Up"

Here’s an example.  The questioner is Cariou’s attorney, Dan Brooks.  Hayes is Prince’s attorney, Steven Hayes.  Bart is Hollis Gonerka Bart, the attorney for co-infringers Larry Gagosian and the Gagosian Gallery.

Q.  Do you have your own airplane?

A.  No.

Q.  You’re taking flying lessons though, right?

A.  No, I made that up.

Q.  Okay.  All right, you said –

A.  I make – I say a lot of things –

Q.  That aren’t true?

A.  That aren’t – well, no.  It’s more about – it depends upon the interviewer.  I try to be creative, let’s put it that way.

Q.  Okay.  So when you said you were taking flying lessons in your own airplane, that was not true?

A.  I was being creative.

Q.  Which means it wasn’t true?

Mr. Hayes:  Objection to the form of the question.  It’s been asked and answered.

A.  I would leave that up to the audience.  I mean I don’t want to tell – I don’t want to say whether or not – I might – I might be flying, taking flying lessons.  I don’t see the relevance of that.

Q.  That’s fine.  But you understand you’re under oath right now?

A.  Oh.

Q.  Do you understand that?

A.  Yes.

. . .

Ms. Bart:  He certainly was sworn in at the beginning to tell the truth –

Mr. Brooks:  I understand.

Ms. Bart:  -- and he agreed to do that.

Mr. Brooks:  Hopefully that’s what we’ll get.

Prince was also asked about the accuracy of a December 2007 report by Randy Kennedy in the New York Times that “Mr. Prince has spoken of receiving threats, some legal and some more physical, from his unsuspecting lenders.” 

Q.  Now, is it true that you starting receiving legal threats at some point?

A.  No, that’s probably something that I just made up.

Paying the Price

Prince has cultivated a reputation as an outlaw who takes whatever image he wants without asking anyone’s permission or paying any fees to the copyright owner.  It turns out that reputation is not wholly accurate, at least according to his deposition testimony.

Prince's "Spiritual America"

One of his most notorious works – it was pulled from a 2009 exhibition at the Tate because it could possibly violate obscenity laws -- is his photograph of Garry Gross’s photo of a 10-year-old naked Brooke Shields in a steamy bathtub, made up like a woman in her sexual prime.  It has been reported that he paid Gross a $2000 out-of-court settlement.  

Prince, though, testified that he bought the rights to the image.  Is what he termed a “concession” in fact the price he was willing to pay to show the work at the Whitney Museum here in New York?

Here’s the testimony:

Q.  Did Garry Gross ever threaten to sue you?

A.  No, he never did.

Q.  Did you ever reach an out-of-court settlement with Garry Gross?

A.  No.

Q.  You’re positive? 

A.  I’m positive.

As far as I can tell, I’m positive.  I actually – in 1992 I guess that’s what they’re talking about, your last quote here (from the Times article) – I mean Mr. Kennedy is talking about a 1992 discussion at the Whitney, and I believe at that time I bought the rights to the image for $2000.

Q.  From Gary Gross?

A. Yes.

Q.  Because he threatened to sue you?

A.  No.  I was told by the Whitney that I – in order to exhibit that image I made a concession, or they advised me that it would probably be best that – and I believe I sort of reached out to him at the time.

Because up until then, that image that I rephotographed from that pamphlet that he had produced in 1983, I made one copy, an 8 x 10, and I gave it away.  And it wasn’t until 1992 that it came back into the limelight, and I think my attitude changed a bit and I was sort of willing to become more part of the process I suppose.

Prince produced the photograph in an edition of 10 with two artist proofs.  One of the ten was sold at auction in 2003 for $372,500.

Images pulled from the internet. 

Text Copyright Laura Gilbert 2011

In Richard Prince Copyright Case, Who Bought the Infringing Paintings and How Much Did They Pay? EXCLUSIVE

Richard Prince, "Specially Round Midnight," purchased by Steven A. Cohen for $2.43 million

In this reporter’s ongoing investigation into Cariou v. Prince -- the court case that found appropriation artist Richard Prince, Larry Gagosian, and the Gagosian Gallery had all infringed photographer Patrick Cariou’s copyright – names and dollar amounts are becoming available.   

The U.S. District Court – whose decision is being appealed, of course – has enjoined the buyers from displaying the works in public, and that order stands.

Copyright experts and even Prince’s own attorney think that injunction makes it all but impossible for these collectors to sell the paintings.  Their current value is thus pretty close to zero.

According to documents filed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on October 26, leading the list of purchasers of what the court termed “unlawful” paintings is none other than Steven A. Cohen, one of the biggest collectors of contemporary art and head of controversial hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors.

Steven A. Cohen

SAC, which has for years been publicly remored to have engaged in unlawful activity of its own, has provided investors with remarkably consistent and high above-market returns, even in down markets.  The Feds suspect hanky-panky, and recent news reports in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere indicate that an investigation is ongoing.

For Prince’s work, Cohen apparently paid the most of any buyer, purchasing “Specially Round Midnight” for $2.43 million.  Easy come, easy go?

Other buyers include Michael and Lise Evans, who bought “Mr. Jones” for $2 million, art dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, collector Adam Lindemann, and shipping magnate Philip Niarchos.

What follows is a list of works declared unlawful and sold through February 2009 and the prices paid:

“Specially Round Midnight,” $2.43 million

“Mr. Jones,” $2 million

“Escape Goat,” $2 million

“Canal Zone,” $1.2 million

“The Other Side of the Island,” $1.2 million

“Naked Confessions,” $450,000

“Untitled (Rasta)," $400,000

One buyer, whom I have not yet been able to identify, wanted to buy three paintings – “Back to the Garden,” “Cookie Crumbles,” and an untitled work.  But he had cash flow problems, so he traded a Richard Serra sculpture for them.  Gagosian Gallery, which is Prince’s dealer, got the sculpture, the buyer got the paintings, and Prince got money.

In addition, Prince traded four of his “Canal Zone” paintings for a work owned by Gagosian, “Dying and Dead Veteran” by Larry Rivers, estimated to be worth between $3 million and $4 million.

Stay tuned, as I’ll be breaking a lot more news over the next week.

Two images from Patrick Cariou's "Yes, Rasta" that Prince used in creating "Specially Round Midnight" (top)

Image of Cohen pulled from the internet.  "Yes, Rasta" images Copyright Patrick Cariou.

Text Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

In Case that Triggered Russian Embargo on Loans to U.S. Museums, Chabad Now Says It Wants to Negotiate; Russian Ship Refuses to Land in San Francisco, Citing Dispute

This story of the latest developments in Chabad v. Russian Federation was up briefly and then purchased exclusively by the New York Observer (it was reported and written by me).  Read it here.

Egypt's Newest Antiquities Chief Submits Resignation, Saying He Will Not "Be Regarded As A Stooge"

After little more than a month in office, Mohamed Abdel Fatah submitted his resignation on Tuesday as Egypt’s antiquities chief – the formal title is Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities -- according to various reports from the Middle East.   

Abdel Fatah, apparently the latest casualty in the scandal-ridden country which is in the midst of a revolution, cited as one reason the intensification of protests in Egypt – which has put “all archaeological work on hold.”

Profiteering?

He made the statement to the Egyptian newspaper Ahram, which published it approximately Friday, New York time.  He said he was also outraged by his lack of authority to make any decisions without the approval of current Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.

The recent protests in Egypt – which saw the breaching of the concrete wall around the Israeli Embassy -- have included protests in front of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (the SCA).

Mohamed Abdel Fatah

Egyptian demonstrators demanding salary raises and the appointment of new graduate archaeologists have blocked entrance to the SCA headquarters and caused the closure of several buildings. 

People behind the protests are “profiteering from accelerating such protests to create chaos that stops archaeological work from proceeding properly,” Abdel Fatah claimed to Ahram.

At one point the Council reportedly called the military police to remove the demonstrators.

“Conditions have become chaotic, and I am afraid to say that the SCA is now completely paralyzed,” the Agence France Presse quoted Abdel Fatah as saying.

Stooge

“The load on me was unbearable,” he told the official Middle East News Agency.  “I refuse to be regarded as a stooge. . . . I felt powerless and overwhelmed especially that I had been deprived of much of my authority.”  As an example, he said he could not authorize the payment of $50 as compensation to an archaeologist whose leg had been amputated.

The SCA oversees the country’s ancient monuments and all archaeological work and plays a key role in Egypt’s tourist industry, which has declined dramatically since last February’s toppling of  Hosni Mubarak and the continuing, often violent turmoil in Egypt.

Abdel Fatah was appointed in August to replace the famed wildman-hustler Zawi Hawass, who resigned soon after the Mubarak government fell amid allegations that he was too close to the Mubaraks.  Hawass was later reappointed, and then ousted in July.  

Zawi Hawass

Hawass was known for stifling discourse within Egypt while quite successfully  promoting himself – with appearances on the Discovery cable-TV channel, for example, and taking credit for sensational and sometimes dubious discoveries, like unearthing the very chariot from which King Tut had taken a fatal tumble.

He was also remarkably persuasive in convincing institutions in other countries, including the Metropolitan Museum, to return antiquities to Egypt, causing some to question whether the Met had lost its marbles in addition to its antiquities. 

Hawass is currently facing an official Egyptian investigation on corruption charges, as are so many others in the former dictatorship. 

Will Abdel Fatah reappear as antiquities chief the way Hawass did?  On Friday Ahram reported that the cabinet had refused Abdel Fatah’s resignation and had scheduled a meeting with him today.

Photo of protest from Egyptian Gazette.  Other photos pulled from the internet.

Text copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Earliest Known Images of Jesus: Exclusive Dura-Europos Exhibit Installation Photos

The earliest known images of Jesus, from the year 240, are going on view for the first time in New York on Friday.  They're in an exhibition at the relatively obscure NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, which continually puts on small shows that turn accepted ideas of art and culture upside-down.

The exhibition is called "Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos."  It presents 77 objects from an excavation in Syria that rewrote history.

You can read about it exclusively in today's New York Observer.

A sense of the images' scale can be seen in the photograph to the left, which shows them with exhibitions director Dr. Jennifer Chi.

At the top of this post is a photo of two of the wall paintings from the baptistery at Dura, showing the Healing of the Paralytic on the left and Jesus and Peter Walking on Water on the right.  The baptistery wall paintings are "the earliest dated Christian art in existence," said co-curator Dr. Peter De Staebler.

I took the photographs as the show was being installed.

Here's a close-up of the Healing of the Paralytic:

The excavations at Dura also revealed a Jewish figural tradition that had been previously unknown, and thought to be nonexistent, until archaeologists rediscovered a large synagogue whose walls were covered with Bible scenes.  The wall paintings are in Damascus, but the Institute is showing together for the first time ten ceiling tiles from the synagogue that are elaborately decorated with faces, astrological signs, fruit, and pine cones.

Here's a photograph of Capricorn from the synagogue, dated ca. 245.

Dura was a garrison town, and "Edge of Empires" displays some military artifacts.  This detail is of a lion painted on a Roman shield that greets visitors as they enter the second gallery:

"Edge of Empires:  Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europas," NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World," 15 East 84th Street, September 23, 2011 to January 8, 2012.  Admission is free.

Text and images Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert.

Met’s $3 Million Splurge on Perino del Vaga Goes on Display September 27

Last January the Metropolitan Museum set records at Sotheby’s two days in a row when it bought a drawing by Perino del Vaga (1501-1547) for more than $700,000 and a painting by the same artist for more than $2 million.  

Two million dollars, by the way, is the amount of the Met’s expected shortfall for fiscal year 2011 -- a shortfall, the museum’s chief spokesperson told reporter Lee Rosenbaum in June, that in part led to the Met’s increasing its recommended admission from $20 to $25.

Both works are finally going on display beginning September 27 in a small show devoted to Perino that will include drawings from the Morgan Library and private New York collections in addition to the Met’s own stash. 

Perino, hardly a household name, was a student of Raphael’s in Rome.  There are only a handful of panel paintings attributed to him. 

The Met’s painting, “The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist,” is a “newly discovered” work and has been described as atypical of the artist. 

Apparently, though, the museum had a lot of company in accepting either the attribution or the painting’s intrinsic worth.  Five buyers, one of which was reportedly the Louvre, bid it up from its $300,000 to $400,000 estimate.

The drawing is a study for a tapestry, the specialty of Met director Thomas Campbell. 

It’ll be a homecoming of sorts for the guest curator, Linda Wolk-Simon, who was formerly a curator at the Met and is now head of prints and drawings at the Morgan.

Frankly, when I saw the painting at Sotheby’s auction preview I wasn’t too impressed -- it looked like a dingy old thing.  Maybe we should be relieved that after cleaning and restoring it the Met did not announce it had discovered yet another Velazquez. 

Photos:  Top, pulled off the internet; bottom, from Sotheby's catalogue.

Text copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Renaissance Portraits, de Kooning, and Smarty-Pants Cattelan: The Shows New York Will Be Talking About

The hot shows in New York as a cold winter approaches:

De Kooning: A Retrospective, MoMA, opening September 18

The biggest show of the fall, in more ways than one, is the seven-decade retrospective of Abstract Expressionist de Kooning.  He didn’t have a clue about how to live – he spent a lot of time in alcoholic blackout -- but sure knew how to paint.

With more than 200 works – about four times as many as the last museum retrospective, at Washington's National Gallery in 1994 -- this is the first show to occupy MoMA’s entire 6^th-floor gallery space, all 17,000 square feet.  It’s put together by peerless MoMA curator emeritus John Elderfield, and the museum is promising “the most comprehensive book on the artist yet.” 

The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, Metropolitan Museum, opening December 21

People are now lining up to see “The Renaissance Portrait” at Berlin’s Bode Museum, and its opening a week ago received worldwide coverage.  For good reason:  The combined heft of the Bode and the Met has secured loans of 15^th-century Italian paintings and sculpture from more than 50 institutions.

Met curator Keith Christiansen -- who, by the way, got $1.2 million in compensation for fiscal year 2010 -- described to the AP the challenge of Renaissance artists’ “rediscovery” of portraiture: “The artists who painted independent portraits for the first time confronted the issues of what a portrait is about: Is it about commemoration, is it about celebration of beauty, is it about social position, rulership, identity?”  The results are stunning, as is the curator's compensation.

According to Christiansen's office, the Leonardo "Lady with an Ermine," which is part of the Bode show, will not be coming to New York.  It's traveling to London instead, for the Leonardo extravaganza there.

Ingres at the Morgan, opening September 9, and David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre opening September 23, Morgan Library

The seventeen drawings by Ingres, one of the greatest draftsmen and portraitists of all time, will include his large, jaw-dropping "Odalisque and Slave" (below) and numerous portrait drawings.  The Morgan will also be presenting a whopping 80 drawings on loan from the Louvre by some of the best French artists of the late 18^th and 19th centuries.

After that, you can hop up to the Frick and see this staid institution gingerly enter the 20^th century with Picasso drawings from 1890-1921 (opening October 4).  Even if you think you’ve seen all the Picasso you can stand, it should be worth the trip – the Frick’s small shows are so intelligently put together, they rarely let you down. 

Infinite Jest:  Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine, Metropolitan Museum, opening September 13

What we need in this age of political and economic absurdity is a big laugh at the expense of those responsible.  The Met may deliver, or at least provide some comic relief, with this show of 164 works on paper – five centuries’ worth -- that mock fat cats, fashion, politics, art, eating and drinking, and powerful people who make life miserable for the rest of us.  Included are works both by geniuses like Leonardo, Goya, Daumier, and Hogarth and by anonymous commentators who were just fed up.  The one loan in this exhibit is a David Levine drawing of Claus Oldenberg’s head as a toilet, with everything else from the Met’s rich storehouse.  

Art of Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia, Metropolitan Museum, opening November 1

After eight long years, the Met’s collection of Islamic art will finally be back on display. Fifteen new galleries with art from a vast geographic territory will be filled with splendor:  ceramics, glass, tilework, textiles, gold jewelry, medieval Qur’ans, illustrated manuscripts from Iran (left), painted miniatures from India, art made for the Ottoman court.  An extra fillip: Artisans from Fez have created a patio modeled on a late medieval Moroccan design, complete with a fountain.   

 Maurizio Cattelan:  All, Guggenheim, opening November 4

Italy’s favorite smarty-pants gets a mid-career retrospective.  Cattelan is probably best-known here for his effigy of Pope John Paul II being felled by a meteor and for his popularity among the vulgar rich -- his bust of Stephanie Seymour cradling her breasts, generally considered pretty mediocre, sold at auction last fall for $2.4 million.  Will seeing 130 of his works explain his appeal or show him up as just annoying?  New Yorkers will have a chance to evaluate the hullabaloo for themselves.

Sherrie Levine: Mayhem, Whitney Museum of American Art, opening November 10

The Whitney’s show offers an opportunity to reexamine one of the original appropriation artists – in 1981 Levine exhibited photographs she had taken of Walker Evans photographs – at a time when artists, photographers, lawyers, and commentators are hypersensitive to the word “copyright.”  Her Evans photos, to which she holds the copyright, are among the works included.

Images, top to bottom:  From MoMA website; from Bode Museum website (Benedetto de Maiano, portrait of Filippo Strozzi); from Morgan Library website; from Metropolitan Museum website (Anonymous, "Top and Tail"); from Metropolitan Museum website; bottom two, pulled from the internet.

Text Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert