Have you always been funny?
Richard Prince: No, I'm not so funny. I like it when other people are funny. It's hard being funny. Being funny is a way to survive. It's like that joke, Jewish Man to his Friend: 'If I live I'll see you Wednesday. If I don't I'll see you Thursday'.
When did you start telling jokes?
I never really started telling. I started telling them over. Back in 1985, in Venice, California, I was drawing my favorite cartoons in pencil on paper. After this I dropped the illustration or image part of the cartoon and concentrated on the punch line.
What was your first joke? And when did you tell it?
The 'psychiatrist' joke. 1986- when I was living in New York, in the back of 303 Gallery on Park Ave. South. Like this, 'I went to see a psychiatrist. He said "tell me everything", I did, and now he's doing my act'. I wrote it out by hand on a piece of paper with a pencil. On a small piece of paper. I called it a "Hand-Written "joke.
Are they always your own jokes?
None of them are mine. I get them from magazines, books, the internet. Sometimes from the inside of a bank. You know they're just like blueprints that float around the sky and show up on a cloud. Sometimes I buy them from other criminals. People tell them to me. Ministers. Rabbis. Priests. Once I saw one in the washing machine spinning around getting clean.
Do you laugh at your own jokes?
No.
Are there comedians you enjoy watching?
Sam Kinison. Bernie Mac. Richard Pryor. Phyllis Diller. Rodney Dangerfield.
Are there any no-go areas of humour?
Religious paintings. Religious jokes. Black paintings. Black jokes. White paintings. White jokes. Right and wrong. Responsibility. Crossing a line. Step over this line if you want to fight, and then that someone does and you step back and draw another line. 'Why did the Nazi cross the road?' That's it. My no-going area is like living in sand. Moving by wading more than swimming. I mean I wouldn't kill for a joke. There's a lot of areas the world goes where it shouldn't be going. The world is fucked up enough without me fucking it up more.
Most people start painting and then add words. Did you start the other way?
I got my supplies. I got my houseboat. I got a good pair of shoes. The light is good. The clock is ticking. I wake up and I'm doing it in my sleep. The bed is made and the floor is clean. It's my turn to drive, I sit back. I stare. I stare at the painting and I forget. It's finished. Then I get more canvas and more stretchers and more paint and start over.
When did you first think that you were a serious artist?
In 1967. I was seventeen. I walked into the Whiskey on Sunset Strip and heard Jim Morrison sing Roadhouse Blues.
Does your art come from an autobiographical source?
It's all just like me. And it's all what I like. If you like it, I'll call it mine. But you can't say it's all mine. Some of me, some of you. Most of me, none of you. It's like when they ask me where I'm from- I say, 'not from any place really'. And they say, 'What? Born in a balloon?'
What do you see as your major influences?
The Canal Zone. Peach Street in Braintree, Mass. Zorro. Carving the word 'shit' on my desk in fifth grade. Getting to know how to make it come out of my cock in sixth grade. Steve McQueen and the two cars in the movie Bullitt. Watching Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on TV. The Vietnam war. Martin Luther King's assassination. Jackson Pollack. Lenny Bruce. Jimmy Piersol (he played baseball for the Boston Red Sox and he was mentally unstable). Touching the Berlin Wall in 1968. Rod Sterling. Hugh Hefner. What's My Line? Truth or Consequences. Who Do You Trust? The Ed Sullivan Show (all TV shows). Milton Bradley. Christian Metz. Lew Welch (a poet). Two Lane Blacktop (a movie). Woodstock. Procol Harum. Blonde on Blonde. Beach combing in Weymouth, Mass, when I was a teenager. West Side Story- especially the outfit Bernardo wore to the YMCA dance. The INs and OUTs of the New York Social Register. The fragrance counter at Sak's Fifth Avenue. Carol Shelby. The shininess of the Velvet Underground. The Beach Boys'. In My Room. The World of Video. Tons more. Tons.
Are there other artists working today or in the past that you rate highly?
Christopher Wool. Jeff Koons. Fischli & Weiss. David Hammonds. Sarah Lucas. Martin Kippenberger. Rosemarie Trockel. Walter Dahn. George Condo. James Casebere. James Welling. Dike Blair. Ricky Sparrow. Damien Hirst. Thomas Ruff.
Is advertising a major influence in your work?
Overdetermination. Art directed. Psychologically hopped-up. Too good to be true. The way it could be but never is. I wouldn't say an influence so much as a sub-text. I've always liked when the impossible looks possible. Like a good Sci-Fi film.
Although your subject matter is loud, your palette seems quiet. Is this how you see it?
Yes. Like a beautiful scar on our head.
As well as jokes, are you also working on other kinds of painting?
YES. I'm painting nurses. I like their hats. Their aprons. Their shoes. My mother was a nurse. My sister was a nurse. My grandmother and two cousins were nurses. I collect 'nurse' books. Paperbacks. You can't miss them. They're all over the airport. I like the words 'nurse', 'nurses', 'nursing'. I'm recovering.
Do you work at the same time with photographic images as well as written ones?
Yes. Mixing up the medicine. Pajamas and a pipe. Slippers and a dog. Back and forth. Which is which? Bang a gong. Dip a brush. Click a camera. It's a free concert from now on.
Do you find it confusing to work in different media at the same time?
There's nothing confusing about making art for me. I can't build a house. I can't ride a horse. I can't repair a car. I can't sing and I can't vote. Wavy hair. Freckles on a face. An arm defined by a vein. I can make art.
Does working and living outside of New York help to focus the mind on art matters and avoid art politics?
I like living outside. Working outside. Right now outside is good. I can eat politics, I can sleep politics, but I don't have to drink politics.