Reply #45: RIchard Prince didn't even do the original

[buzzycrumbhunger]

His schtick was apparently always to "recreate" other people's work; he did a whole series using the Marlboro man, as I recall, claiming to have "augmented" the originals. In this case, the original was done by another goon, Gary Gross (warning--this link contains three shots from the same session), who was involved in a long legal wrangle with the mother later, when Brooke wanted his rights revoked. In the end, it was ruled that her mother had signed away her rights and he could do whatever he wanted. In the end, he sold the rights x10 to Prince, who then zoomed in on her, cranked up the saturation, and. . . called it "art."

Yes, the so-called artists are pigs, any gallery using this is pushing the limits and trying to legitimize child porn as something more lofty than it is, and mostly, I have to wonder why Brooke Shields hasn't bitch-slapped her mother for whoring her own child like she did. She could argue that Pretty Baby was exposing something ugly, but in painting her child up and allowing her to be photographed like this, she essentially played a comparable scenario out IRL. That a mother would pimp her child like that is unconscionable.

Ugh. There isn't even an emoticon to convey the willies properly.