Richard Prince: Body

‘Super Group is the first of three bodies of work. They go together. Have something in common. Themes. Stories. What I know. What I like. What I like to know. What I want to know. Knows and looks that have to do with music and counter culture.
The second body is The Ripple Paintings.
The third is High Times.

In 2011 I was checking out my collection of Sonic Youth albums. I pulled out the records and removed the records from the sleeves. There were nine sleeves. I laid out the sleeves in a grid, three on top of three on top of three. Another square. I looked at it and called it Nine Sonic Youths. That excited me. The name, the title connected the abstraction and made it less abstract. It looked like art.

‘Sometimes you get what you need’

Supergroup is what I needed. And sometimes what you need is all you need.
I’d been working with sleeves on and off for four years, they weren’t right, they weren’t finished. They didn’t have extra extra. They had a verse and bridge but they didn’t have a hook.
Super Group became the hook. Sum, total, whole.
I can stack Roy Orbison, Chuck D, Bill Evans, Patsy Cline, The Pretenders, and Lee Renaldo on one sleeve.
Standard. Staple. Classic. Popular.
The whole sleeve can be a hit.’

R. Prince, Super Group, Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2017