In the late 80’s, Richard Prince and dealer Colin de Land produced John Dogg; a fictional entity turned fine artist. Prince and de Land first introduced Dogg’s work in a 1986 exhibition at the American Fine Arts, Co. Dogg’s identity was kept anonymous up until de Land’s death in 2003, when Richard Prince publicly acknowledged the joint endeavor. Prince described John Dogg as “a minimalist Neal Cassady — was once employed to deliver special cars to buyers by driving them across the country” and occasionally, he returns to the pseudonym to make works and author texts. [Installation View] John Dogg, 303 Gallery, New York, 1987One of the later occasional returns of John Dogg was in 2016 at the first “High Times” show at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles. Here Prince exhibited a curated selection of historical High Times covers. In a later showing of High Times at the Gagosian in Los Angeles in 2019, Prince encouraged visitors to visit a nearby cannabis lounge where samples of Prince’s own cannabis brand could be found and sampled titled, Katz + Dogg. The companies website claims Katz + Dogg “can aid carving out your own headspace but is also inherently social, bringing all of us freaks together.” There’s a great read on this specific Dogg Prince endeavor over on Kaleidoscope’s digital archive; from their SS20 issue. More recently, through random discovery, I stumbled across a John Dogg account on OpenSea with Princes Marlboro Men featured as the background, his Katz + Dogg caricature as the profile photo and the bio referencing one of his joke paintings. The works featured and for sale are all reminiscent of Prince’s; a copy of J.D Salinger’s, A Catcher in the Rye, Instagram paintings and a new Untitled [Publicity] work featuring Elon Musk and Grimes. This reappearance of John Dogg has yet to be confirmed it is actually Richard Prince, but I wouldn’t put it past him… or the roles were reversed and Prince is on the other end of appropriation. John Dogg’s account via OpenSea.io John Dogg, The Catcher in the NFT, 2021John Dogg, Untitled [publicity], 2021