Richard Prince:" de Kooning," a tribute to an artist

Best known for his cowboy photographs illustrating Marlboro advertising campaigns and for his "nurse" paintings, American artist Richard Prince's "de Kooning" series is a process of interaction with the canonic imagery of the Abstract Expressionist idol Willem de Kooning. The idea for these edgy Oedipal works came to Prince when he was looking through a catalogue of de Kooning's Women series. He started sketching over the paintings, applying fragments of male and female torsos, genitalia, thighs, and facial features, cut and pasted from catalogues and vintage porn magazines, as well as drawing with graphite and oil crayon, adding outlines, silhouettes and textures to the original figures that blur the distinction between de Kooning's imagery and Prince's own.
From these worked drawings evolved a series of paintings that are, similarly, montages of elements from de Kooning's original paintings with figures cut from printed matter. Both homage and desecration, the de Kooning paintings exemplify Prince's vision of a "Spiritual America," a historical consciousness fueled by a pervasive desire for rebellion and reinvention.
Born in 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone, Richard Prince lives and works in New York.

Richard Prince: de Kooning, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper is on view at Gagosian Gallery, Paris from March 30 to May 21, 2011. This show also coincides with "Richard Prince: American Prayer" at the Bibliotheque nationale de France.

It was time to pay homage to an artist I really like. Some people worship at the altar - I believe in de Kooning. ~Richard Prince

Images courtesy of Gagosian Gallery Paris
Richard Prince

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Victoire de Castellane and her fabulous "Fleurs d'exces"

The fringed bangs, fashioned before she was five years old, the improbably high heels, the flared black skirts: Victoire de Castellane's silhouette is a poem in itself. A Parisienne, de Castellane grew up in an aristocratic family whose originis can be traced back to the 10th century. Her grandmother Sylvia Hennessy along with her friend Barbara Hutton were champions of both enormous and extravagant jewelry. Victoire de Castellane accomplished her first feat of jewelry-making at the age of five: she dismantled a priceless charm-bracelet to make a pair of earrings. At age twelve, she created her first ring. Indifferent to convention though passionate about history and technical challenge, de Castellane's ideas are driven by an exuberant imagination, deriving from mixed sources such as the synthetic wonders of Technicolor; the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney; Hollywood screen idols and manga characters.

In 1998, Victoire de Castellane joined Dior as the first Creative Director of their new jewelry department, a role she continues to this day. Her highly original collections for Dior have redefined and revivified haute joaillerie for a new generation. With "Fleurs d'exces" Flowers of excess, she has gone further to create unique works that recall the jeweled obsessions of times past, such as the mechanical nightingale of Hans Christian Andersen's children's tale, Faberge eggs, and the fabulous bestiaries of animals real and mythic. De Castellane's flowers are intoxicating, but also dangerous because of the poisons that they secrete.

Amanita Satana Diabolus

Acidae Lili Pervertus

Opium Velourosa Purpa

Crystalucinea Metha Agressiva

Extasium Ethero Coitus

Quo Cainus Magic Disco

Exhibition Victoire de Castellane: Fleurs d'exces at Gagosian Gallery Paris
March 2 - March 22, 2011
Courtesy Gagosian Gallery Paris

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