Richard Prince is the latest artist to protest the Trump administration. recently returning the $36,000 payment he received for a portrait he made for Ivanka Trump. The artist made this decision after considering the Trump family to be unworthy of his art. As he says of the choice:
“It was just an honest way for me to protest. It was a way of deciding what’s right and wrong. And what’s right is art and what’s wrong is not art. I decided the Trumps are not art.”
This is not my work. I did not make it. I deny. I denounce. This fake art. pic.twitter.com/ouHJmVeF8C
— Richard Prince (@RichardPrince4) January 11, 2017
Not forgetting the irony that it wasn’t really the work of Richard Prince to begin with, seeming as he just took it off Ivanka’s Instagram feed, his move shows the ways that artists can fight back against Trump and co., namely by making the art they own irrelevant. This approach can either make the art worthless — as it technically no longer has Prince’s name on it — or even more valuable, as it is now part of living history. But which other artists have publicly disowned their works, and for what reasons? In honour of Richard Prince, we’ve compiled a list of five artists who no longer wanted their name attached to their art.
1962 Industrial Landscape, formerly by Gerard Richter
Gerhard Richter
Germany’s best contemporary painter baffled critics when considering his early West German output as moot last year. From 1962 to 1968 he tried his hand at a more realistic style, including the above industrial landscape. Different from his usual technique, Richter now considers none of it to be truly authentic work.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Gonzalez-Torres disowned a large number of two- and three-dimensional works throughout his career, considering them to be “no longer acknowledged by the artist as constituting art and hence stricken-by him-from the oeuvre.” As a result his estate rarely sells these works, and when they are sold, they go for considerably less.
“Cowboys Milking,” 2011. Formerly attributed to Cady Noland
Cady Noland
Considered by some to be even more difficult to work with than Richard Price, postmodern sculptor Cady Noland is no stranger to controversy. She became the subject of an intense lawsuit in 2012 when she yanked Cowboys Milking from Sotheby’s auction site after accusing the company of defacing the corners of her work. More recently, her work at the Brant Foundation came with with a humorous disclaimer:
“The artist, or C.N., hasn’t given her approval or blessing to this show.”
Anthony Caro
When Sir Anthony Caro’s Lagoon sculpture had legs appended to it, he considered the addition to be a mutilation. Previously expected to sell for £150,000, his denunciation contributed to it receiving not one bid at auction.
Untitled Desert Landscape. Authorship contested.
Peter Doig
Peter Doig’s work was at the centre of a huge lawsuit when he claimed that a $10 million painting reminiscent of his style wasn’t actually his. The complainants, Robert Fletcher and art dealer Peter Bartlow, took him to court over not authenticating his own work. This was considered bizarre as the work was actually signed “Peter Doig”. Doig won the case, with his defence stating that the signature was another guy with the same name. Yet, perhaps this court case has set a dangerous precedent. Given the Trump family’s predilection for lawsuits, perhaps we shall see something similar happen to Prince.