Richard Prince (b. 1949) is one of the most innovative, influential and polemic American artists. Whether you associate him with The Pictures Generation, post-modernism or Appropriation Art, his contribution is undeniable.  

Prince has worked in a variety of formats over the course of his career, yet each of his iconic and provocative series shares a similar approach. Extract an element from the  American vernacular culture and position it in a way similar to Duchamp's urinal. 

Prince started to work with jokes in 1986. These works were a defiant contradiction to the reigning hierarchies in the art world perpetuated by Minimalism or Neo-Expressionist painting. Prince's works from this series forced the viewer to become a reader...often having to read "jokes" that were corny or not particularly funny and seemed highly out-of place in a gallery setting. 

The earliest of Prince's jokes were similar to this print - they appeared to be simple handwritten notes. Their simple, or anti, aesthetic seemed to be simultaneously parodying tropes established by Conceptual and Minimalist artists of the previous decade (Yoko Ono comes to mind) 

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"Greetings Cards #3: Canada Dry" 

Foil-stamped print, on heavy wove paper

Signed and numbered by the artist

From an edition of 100 

Germany, 2011

6.25"H 8.5"W  (work)

8.5"H 10.5"W (framed)

Excellent condition.

Literature: Jonathan Lethem, Richard Prince: Collected Writings, 2011.