Richard Prince

Richard Prince (born 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone) is an American painter and photographer. Prince began appropriating photographs in 1975. His image, Untitled (Cowboy), a "rephotograph" of a photograph taken originally by Sam Abell and appropriated from a cigarette advertisement, was the first "rephotograph" to raise more than $1 million at auction when it was sold at Christie's New York in 2005.
He was first interested in the art of the American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. "I was very attracted to the idea of someone who was by themselves, fairly antisocial, kind of a loner, someone who was noncollaborative."^[2] Prince grew up during the height of Pollock's career, making his work accessible. The 1956 Time magazine article dubbing Pollock "Jack the Dripper" made the thought of pursuing art as career possible. After a law suit for his re-photography he went on and continued paintings and focused on that a lot more. Prince called the Joke paintings "what I wanted to become known for."