In 1989 Richard Prince photographed a print campaign as it had appeared, printed, in the pages of a Time-Life publication, framing out the branding – Marlboro. In doing so, he made an art object by adding a relationship; we are now at one remove from an advert intent on pushing coffin nails and can take a wider view.

It’s difficult to get a handle on how much was cut out of the original image, as it is hard to track down; at least, it is comparatively harder than Prince’s version; this is ironic considering the other key in Prince’s transformation of this into an art object was having found a mass-reproduced image and used it to make an edition of two. The ad predates the digital age and the official Marlboro website; the Prince changed hands at Christie’s for $1,248,000 in 2005, which made it newsworthy. The landscape has changed. The time of abundance of the original has passed and now only the myth as told by Prince remains; this is, of course, like the cowboy himself but the appropriation of the cowboy’s image does not begin with Prince but, in fact, Marlboro; everything about the rose-tinting of America the frontier is already in the ad; either it takes Prince’s act to show it or he is trying to make the next comment.

Rolling Stone Keith Richards stars in this painterly Louis Vuitton campaign, lensed by Annie Leibovitz. Its combination of portraiture and still life, and the treatment, puts one in mind of ‘The Ambassadors’ by Holbein and of similarly stuffed works by the Dutch; note the skulls on the right and the magnifying glass – memento mori both. Images in this genre are wont to remind us that book reading and music, symbolised by instruments, are two of the Earthly pleasures you cannot take with you, not even if you have the LV monogrammed luggage. The message, then, is that you should spend your money in your lifetime.

The case is a custom job for Richards’ guitar; it is not on sale; within the picture it’s almost incidental, far more so than is the guitar, which is possibly the most beautifully rendered thing; face on, it’s an aerial view of rockstar’s swimming pool filled with oil and greasy looking metal, which Richards agitates with his right hand. His eyes are lined with the same. The position of his fret hand is not congruent with the rest of the picture however; it doesn’t lead you to believe he’s about to pick out the opening notes of ‘Paint it Black’, while everything else surely does.