Richard Prince: I have no fear of changing looks.

I never had a penny to my name, so I changed my name.

Richard Prince

changed pennies names

The problem with art is, it's not like the game of golf where you put the ball in the hole. There's no umpire; there's no judge. There are no rules. It's one of its problems. But it's also one of the great things about art. It becomes a question of what lasts.

Richard Prince

games golf art

What I find is that the taking, the stealing, the appropriation of images has to do with prior availability, and it sets up a degree where things can be shared... It's like 50% off... You can let something of another emotion or another personality sign on your work, or co-sign it.

Richard Prince

availability degrees personality

We do not make art. We have unnamable motors and dangerous impulses that occupy our thoughts.

Richard Prince

impulse dangerous art

It would be strange for me to think I'm being ripped off, because that's what I do!

Richard Prince

strange would-be thinking

I wouldn't mind people saying, "You can't do this because this isn't enough."

Richard Prince

enough mind people

I got a job in the tear-sheets department, ripping up magazines like People, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and Time, and delivering the editorial pages.... So I began to use a camera to make fake photographs of the ads. By re-photographing a magazine page and then developing the film in a cheap lab, the photos came out very strange.

Richard Prince

jobs sports people

Is passion what we are? Is that what we are in pictures? Is what we are in pictures almost real? Maybe it's become the most real thing.

Richard Prince

real-things passion real

The subject comes first, the medium second.

Richard Prince

mediums art firsts

I wish I had met [Francesca] Woodman forty years ago. It would have been great to live with her for a year. She didn't save anything. She played the camera like a new guitar. She murdered herself out taking pictures.

Richard Prince

guitar wish years

A lot of it's experimental, spontaneous. It's about knocking about in the studio and bumping into things.

Richard Prince

knocking spontaneous art

It's interesting how people who were once fairly radical can become, later in life, kind of conservative and not just in terms of politics - how if you're an artist, you can start out being somewhat avant-garde and then end up doing landscapes. Sometimes the opposite can happen, but it's usually the other way around.

Richard Prince

artist people interesting

The way you would know if someone is famous in the art world is that you would ask your mother. My mother knows who Picasso was. She knows who Warhol was.

Richard Prince

mother world art

I didn't like hovering above myself and looking back, or going through a door and thinking, How many times did I just go through that door? How do I get back? You know, that's not for me.

Richard Prince

looking-back thinking

If you're an artist or someone creative, it's all about cheap rent and not having to work for a living. That's what it's always been about. Unless you're a trust-funder or you somehow score a great part-time job or you work for another artist, you're going to go where you can afford to live.

Richard Prince

creative artist

The art world is a bit smaller than the music world, and the music world is a bit smaller than the cinema world. But the art world is pretty tight even though the biggest thing that's happened to it is the auctions, which are the only reason people on the outside know anything about it.

Richard Prince

people world art

I think with success you do get a little more guarded and you start to change your friends. You become more isolated. And you start hanging around with people who have money! I think that's the biggest thing. Once you do get a bit of change in your pocket, you start hanging around with other people who have some change. It was kind of strange to all of a sudden go from one extreme-Manhattan-to where I went, upstate New York. But I did it because I was dying in the city. I couldn't take it. I couldn't take one more dinner party. I couldn't take one more party, period.

Richard Prince

party people thinking

Sometimes when I walk into a gallery and I see someone's work, I think to myself, 'Gee, I wish I had done that.'

Richard Prince

walk myself work sometimes

In a way, I pattern myself after all the bands I used to like as a kid. Every time they put out LPs, they had a whole new look and a new sound.

Richard Prince

myself look time way

My studio is the only place I feel good in. There, I'm fearless; outside, I'm a mess.

Richard Prince

feel place good feel-good