PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Richard Prince: Cowboy provides an in-depth exploration of the recurring cowboy motif within Richard Prince’s art from the last four decades as well as examining the cowboy as an American symbol.

In the early 1980s, Prince started to focus on the motif of the cowboy, as depicted in a series of ads for Marlboro cigarettes. He re-photographed the ads, cropping and enlarging them to make prints as artworks. “Extending his interrogation of the cowboy into the era of Instagram, Richard Prince demonstrates that the stakes around originality, appropriation, and truth in advertising are as high as ever,” writes author Robert M. Rubin in Cowboy.

Organizing the very diverse content of 700 paintings, photographs, works on paper, texts, lyrics, and movie scripts were the starting design task. COMA then separated the art from related matter by presenting the art generously, without captions. By contrast, “relics and fragments” are arranged in a newspaper-style format, with columns of literary excerpts, lyrics, and script fragments from iconic Western movies.

The design also devotes special attention to Prince’s studio photographs of Western ephemera, which are shown presented alongside fleeting quotes. His latest series of photographs are presented as bookends and printed on a gloss coated stock.

The flexible softcover has the feel of a dusty saddle, or an image picked up from the sandy ground. The title does not appear on the front but, instead, loops around on all four edges of the cover.

BOOK INFORMATION

Trim Size: 9 x 12 inches

Number of Pages: 484

Binding Method: Paperback

Paper: 32 pages gloss coated and 452 pages uncoated

Typefaces:

CREDIT INFORMATION

Creative Director: Cornelia Blatter & Marcel Hermans

Art Director:

Book Designer: COMA Amsterdam/New York

Jacket/Cover Designer: COMA Amsterdam/New York

Illustrator:

Photographer:

Picture Editor:

Production Director:

Production Coordinator: Nicole Jedinak

Production Artist:

Other Credits: Nicole Jedinak - Managing editor; Jana Martin - Consulting and copy editor: Echelon - Color separations

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