Untitled (cowboy)

Richard Princes Untitled (cowboy) from 1986 is a chromogenic print that exemplifies the artists practice of rephotographing existing images, in this case the Marlboro Man advertisements that were among the most iconic images of American masculinity in the second half of the 20th century. Prince, who began his career working in the tear-sheet department of Time-Life where he was surrounded by the detritus of the advertising industry, developed a practice of photographing existing photographs, advertisements, and mass-media images and presenting them as his own work, a strategy that raised fundamental questions about authorship, originality, and the nature of art in an age of mechanical reproduction. The cowboy, as depicted in the Marlboro advertisements that Philip Morris used to sell cigarettes to American men, was a figure of rugged independence and masculine self-sufficiency, and Princes rephotographing of this image both celebrates and critiques the mythology of the American West that the advertisement was designed to exploit. The chromogenic print, a photographic printing process that produces richly saturated colors on a glossy surface, gives the image the same visual quality as the original advertisement, making it difficult to distinguish Princes rephotograph from the original unless the viewer examines the caption and the context in which the image is displayed.

Princes cowboy rephotographs are among the most influential works of postmodern art, and their impact on the discourse of authorship, originality, and appropriation extends from the art world to the legal system. Untitled (cowboy) influenced the development of appropriation art and the broader tradition of art that critiques the imagery of mass culture.

A 1986 chromogenic print by Prince rephotographing the Marlboro Man cowboy advertisements, raising fundamental questions about authorship and originality by appropriating the most iconic image of American masculinity in an age of mechanical reproduction.