Richard Prince has painted a lot of jokes, hundreds and hundreds of jokes.
The funniest thing about Prince’s jokes is that after looking at a number of stupid jokes, you simply laugh, it wasn’t knowing laughter. My HC ex neighbour's hubby was laughing in the LV store reading the bags, which she tot wasnt funny at all. That kind of second-order laughter happens but I think the sheer repetition of his joke paintings pushes past that. After a few of them, the jokes aren’t amusing in their irony anymore.
They’re just what they are: bad jokes.
But sooner or later, one of them catches you as funny. That’s why Prince keeps coming with them. If you don’t like this one, how about this one, or this one? Indeed, a number of his paintings actually go from one joke to another, in one painting.
Here’s the text of “The Black Joke”:
“My wife’s not too smart. The second time she got pregnant she thought we had to get married again."
I don’t think Prince is interested in why any of the jokes in particular may or may not be funny. He's not interrogating the mechanisms of humor. He’s interested in the fact that sooner or later everybody is going to hit one that gets through.
So friends ..grab a Prince LV bag to elevate yourself from the banality of school or the mundanity of teaching...just be prepared to be $4k poorer..hehe
