One of Richard Prince’s “New Portraits”, featuring a young woman in a bra and cropped denim shorts, sold last night at Phillips London for almost $150,000 (est $125,000-$187,000) to an online bidder. The series, in which the US artist takes photographs from other people’s Instagram posts, blows them up and prints them on large-scale canvases, ignited debate about copyright and ownership when they debuted in 2014. Prince alters the works by removing the comments beneath the pictures and adding his own, often droll, remarks.
It would seem the publicity has benefited Prince’s prices: at Frieze New York in May Gagosian Gallery was selling the portraits for $90,000, so the $150,000 achieved last night represents an increase in value of nearly 70% in just five months.
“The Instagram works are very much of the moment and are difficult to get hold of, there was a waiting list at Gagosian,” says Peter Sumner, the head of contemporary art for Phillips London.
Prince’s Untitled (portrait) (2014) was part of a white-glove sale at Phillips that totalled £31.5m (est £24.1m-£36.2m), up from £14.9m this time last year. Half of the sale was backed by third-party guarantees. Artist records were set for Yoshimoto Nara, Danh Vo and Mark Bradford. Ed Dolman, Phillips’s chairman, said the results marked “a good and steady progression” for the auction house.
