This article focuses on the notion of appropriation in Richard Prince's controversial work Cowboys (1980-2002) In the Cowboys series, Prince appropriates the iconic Marlboro Man adverts-by re-photographing, cropping and enlarging these images, as well as exhibiting and selling the result as his own work, as a work of art The aim of the article is to explore and discuss the ways in which Prince's work engages with contemporary discourses of historicity and mythologies, less through the images themselves, but rather through the verygestureof appropriating-some would say stealing-one of America's most famous brand images, themeaning of that gesture, and how this meaning relates to theconstructednes of a culture's historical self-understanding, a culture's mythologized entrance on the historical stage, the constructeness of a beginning, an origin The overall argument of the article is that Prince' appropriation of the icon of the Marlboro Man opens up a traumatic dimension of America's own appropriation of the past
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