This extraordinary book allows the reader to discover a new side of Richard Prince's oeuvre. There are no smoking cowboys swinging their lassoes or bare-breasted blondes on heavy motorcycles in this droll collection of highly expressive drawings and watercolors, whose inventive shapes and joyful colors recall children's drawings or paintings by the mentally ill. Half-figures of indeterminable gender with staring eyes, big ears, and frizzy hair challengingly smirk at the viewer and become an inventory of possibilities that later find their way into the joke paintings of the same period. This lavishly printed publication presents these apparently funny, yet sinister works to a larger public for the first time. Exhibition schedule: Sadie Coles HQ, London, November 2005