~RANDY KENNEDY/on RICHARD PRINCE & JIM KRANTZ/RIP OFF !!
JIM KRANTZ’S PHOTOGRAPH, ‘Stretchin’ Out’ (1997) – taken for a MARLBORO AD/
PHOTO COURTESY: THE NEW YORK TIMES
here’s the RANDY KENNEDY ARTICLE – WHICH SAYS IT ALL – PUBLISHED in the NEW YORK TIMES/
THURSDAY DECEMBER 6, 2007 !!
read it !!: ‘If The Copy Is an Artwork, Then What’s The Original?’
and don’t miss the slide show: more pix, here !!
from the NEW TIMES SLIDE SHOW – the banner that lines the streets uptown with a unattributed JIM KRANTZ PHOTO IMAGE – PROUDLY PROCLAIMING – the RICHARD PRINCE RETROSPECTIVE at THe GUGGENHEIM – PHOTO BY MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES
this is the same image that is the poster for the show – doing brisk business at $9.95 a pop.
looks like they did change a few pixels on this image – they deleted the ciggie !
you’d have to laugh if it wasn’t, so sad.
Image how Mr. Kranz felt encountering that banner floating in the air so grandly. One can pretty much conclude he wasn’t too happy – the article states that he didn’t – “investigate much further to see if any other photos hanging in the museum might be his own, but said of his visit that day, ‘When I left, I didn’t know if I should be proud, or if I looked like an idiot’.”
guess what, yo, you do look an idiot to have let this go down, and for so long – and, why are you so defensive in the article – the beauty of the photos isn’t in their so-called ‘conceptual content’ – as rephrased (?) by RICHARD PRINCE – it’s in the beauty of YOUR VISION.
!!
at the very least, RICHARD PRINCE, & THE GUGGENHEIM – should give him a photo credit.
that’s an unbelievable ommission. JIM KRANTZ is 100% right on – to want people to know who took the photo(s) and to be recognized more widely. Apparently he’s not even an “asterik” in the catalog.
and it isn’t as if a series of in-house photographers took these photos – it seems pretty much – all these companies turned to JIM KRANTZ for his ability to produce these “iconic” American images & he doesn’t even get an asteriked photo credit – he should get a book. what’s up here.
the only thing RICHARD PRINCE got right is the brutal street smarts in American culture and business – he who gets over first – wins.
and, you got love RICHARD PRINCE’S 1992 statement regarding his quote unquote “rustling” of the MARLBORO aesthetic – and MR KRANTZ’S WORK – “No one was looking. This was a famous
campaign. If you’re going to steal something, you know, you go to the bank.”
we’ll give HOLLAND COTTER – also of the NEW YORK TIMES – the last word – with the neat way he ended his review (posted today, FRIDAY DEC 7, 2007) on the PAUL McCARTHY CHOCOLATE FACTORY at MACCARONE – “but that’s great art for you: It may give you a sugar high, but it has dirty little secrets” !!!