The Real Richard

interview by GLENN O’BRIEN
photography TERRY RICHARDSON

 

RICHARD PRINCE is the best artist. I can’t prove it, but trust me. He’s also a great man, and that’s rare, complicated and underrated. I think it’s partly because he really knows how to be himself. And being yourself now is almost illegal. Richard, by being so absolutely, stubbornly, irrevocably himself, is positively radiant. Although sometimes he’s radiant like ultraviolet or infra-red is radiant. Humans might not necessarily see it, but it still burns. You can set the world on fire casually. Art has its own radioactivity. I thought a questionnaire by e-mail would make a good interview, because that’s how we talk day to day. It’s fast and accurate and kind of intimately universal.

GLENN O’BRIEN — Were you born north or south of the Canal Zone? 
RICHARD PRINCE — I was born in the…