Richard Prince — 1970 · ACL-006
A man in a tank top, framed at half-length, hands clasped before him, stares out at the viewer from shadowed eyes. Prince concentrates all his effort on the face, modelled in graphite with a dense, almost pointillist grain that hollows the sockets and brings out the volumes of the skull; the body exists only as outline. That contrast between a head laden with matter and a torso left in reserve gives the portrait its tension. The first name, in capitals on either side of the hands, works as a caption.
Made three years before Prince moved to New York, this drawing belongs to the formative years that precede appropriation, rephotography and the Cowboys. The artist always maintained an interest in figure drawing, which he practised even when it had fallen out of fashion, and which the exhibition The Figures (Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, 2015) brought back to light. Works predating his New York beginnings are rare.
