The Entertainers

This new artist’s book by Richard Prince (born 1949) revisits a seldom seen body of work made during his “Time Life” years spent around the theaters, grind houses, bars and restaurants of New York’s 42nd Street and Times Square. In an introductory essay titled “The Counterfeit Memory,” first published in 1981, the artist describes wandering into the Orleans Theater, writing that “I’m not sure who I am when I’m there or if, in fact, I’m comfortable and want to be there at all. One’s identity it seems is easily changed when what’s in front of you is reversed and transparent, directed and produced.”
In artworks that include some of his earliest portraits, Prince captures the ephemeral, photographic celebrity of publicity headshots, gossip columns, nightclub advertisements and pornographic films, alongside finely rendered drawings such as “Montgomery Clift as Sigmund Freud” and “George Reeves as Himself.” In The Entertainers’ concluding essay, “The Lone Ranger,” the artist states, “I think I’ll go after third place … leave first for the hero.”