In the late 1980s, American artist Richard Prince asked himself how he could create a painting when commercial images already permeated every aspect of the postmodern world. His solution was to “paint something that got painted in real life.” The resulting series of works, though resembling sleek, non-objective, modernist paintings, was actually created from “muscle-car” hoods–specialty hoods available through mail-order.
This customized car hood, like others in the series, was stripped of its defining features at an auto body shop, reshaped to a square format (like a traditional painting) in the artist’s studio, and repainted with a pristine matte finish. By appropriating this object, celebrated by a particular group of fast-car aficionados as high art, Prince questions the promises of a high modernist utopia.