Goldsmith writes:
“A few months ago, a friend pulled off her
bookshelf a new appropriation work by Richard Prince, one so radical and so
daring, that I almost couldn’t believe it was by the same artist. The premise
of the book was achingly simple: a reproduction of the first edition of The
Catcher In The Rye, identical in every way except the author’s name was
swapped from J. D. Salinger to Richard Prince. The production value of the book
was astonishingly high, a perfect facsimile of the original, right down to the
thick, creamy paper stock and classic typeface.”
It is peculiar how Goldsmith forgets to
mention his own book Day (another work of “unoriginality”) being
similarly appropriated (though in a far more ironic and conceptual manner) by
Kent Johnson, a few years ago, who, I think, might have been the first person to
do this sort of thing with a published book.
It appears nothing is original in
conceptual art anymore, even when it’s trying to be unoriginal.
