Richard Prince

Here at Supertouch, we don’t usually dip too deeply into the whole uptown museum scene, but RICHARD PRINCE’s amazing retrospective, “Spiritual America,” that opened this Friday at the Guggenheim Museum is one of the city’s best shows in years. Cutting his teeth in the art world in the early 80’s alongside such like-minded contemporaries as Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman, his controversial use of appropriated imagery and readymades earned him widespread notoriety and ultimately great fame in the real art world. Moving through many distinct series and modes of construction throughout the subsequent decades, Prince’s art became more traditional and organic as reflected in his later series of photos and paintings. The unifying element throughout these disparate bodies of work, however, was his constant exploration of the American soul in all its lowbrow glory, particularly when it was reflected in the mirror of automobile culture. Spanning the length of the artist’s career, the aptly-titled “Spiritual America” assembles an incredible array of visual greatest-hits from his iconic MoPar readymade sculpture “American Prayer,” to his acclaimed “Nurse” series (which provided the artwork for Sonic Youth’s 2004 “Sonic Nurse” LP), in the always-inspiring setting of the Guggenheim spiral. HAVE A LOOK:

Additional photos by Diana Hong