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Where have you gone, Richard Prince?

About 28 years ago, the artist Richard Prince started his "appropriation art" form of re-photographing images from advertisements in popular magazines of the the time- attempting, I think, to mock both the advertisers and the public for buying into the images of such icons as the "marlboro man" "trix, the rabbit" and "mr kool-aid" (with his smiley face and all).

If Prince's art had the same impact on us, as the run-up of the value of his art has had for the owners of his art (it was a Richard Prince photo-of-a-photo taken by some poor freelance schumuck hired by Time-Life in the 70s- that was the 1st photograph to break the $1,000,000 mark at auction) then the advertising industry, with its emphasis on glamour, sex, youth and "lying with statistics*" should have changed by now. Yes? No?

One would think that a quarter-century of dialogue generated by the art of Prince and others would have had a more significant impact on the way things are presented to our populace. But now, with Prince-signature purses selling at Hermes for, well, just a tad more than one with the simple Hermes logos (~$2500) it seems even Prince has thrown in the towel and given-up the good fight- to rest softly in either his seaside mansion on Long Island's east end or in the cozy dutch architecture of update new york.

What happened, Richard? I had a feeling when you started a lot of golf that it was all downhill from there...

*thomas szatz, author