Richard Prince Surfing Nurse 2003 Inkjet print and acrylic on canvas. 162.5 x 106.7 cm. (64 x 42 in). Signed, titled and dated ‘R Prince SURFING NURSE 2003’ on the overlap.
Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York Exhibited EXHIBITED New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Richard Prince Nurse Paintings, 20 September – 25 October, 2003; Jevnaker, Kistefos Museum, Pulp 11, 13 May – 30 September, 2007 Literature M. Collings & R. Prince, ed., Richard Prince Nurse Paintings, New York, 2003, p. 62 (illustrated); M. Fineman, ‘The Pleasure Priniciple. Richard Prince’s Post-Pulp Art Take a New Step’ in Slate, 30 October, 2003; S.C. Regan, Women, Los Angeles, 2004 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay For the artist Richard Prince his interest in collecting has a major influence upon his artistic output: “I don’t see any difference now between what I collect and what I make. It’s become the same. What I’m collecting will, a lot of times, end up in my work.” (Richard Prince quoted in “Artist: Richard Prince ” New York Magazine, April 25, 2005) As a self-avowed bibliophile, books are some of the most important things that Prince collects, from rare first editions of great works of literature, to trashy novels which he chooses for their lurid over-the-top cover images. These covers, from the collection of ‘naughty nurse’ titles he has amassed over the years, provided Prince with the inspiration for a major series of paintings which were originally exhibited together in 2003 as the ‘Nurse Paintings’. Surfing Nurse is from this series, and embodies Prince’s unique ability to mine the American culture for visually compelling images which he appropriates and re-contextualises in order to critique the culture which produced those images. The nurse of the title is seen in profile, appearing demure or utterly absorbed in her task at hand, wearing a white surgical mask and hat which obscures all but the faintest glimpse of her blond hair and one closed eye, long lashed and framed with a perfectly groomed eyebrow. The rest of the painting tells us nothing about the woman, other than the fact that she was featured on the cover of a novel with the title ‘Surfing Nurse’, as the text hovering above her head in a wash of neon-pink announces. The vibrant blue painted surface of Surfing Nurse masks the rest of the original cover treatment, leaving behind only the female figure and the text. This generic figure, identified only by her profession, is a symbolic depiction of the fetishised role of the nurse within American culture – from pulp fictions to television dramas – as vixens and vamps, and potentially sinister women. Prince has struck a chord with the Nurse Paintings: in honing in on the anonymity of the female figures he lets them stand in as objects of desire as they were intended in their original context of the book covers. “The titillation has as much to do with nostalgia for the artifacts of a lost pulp culture as with sexual desire or even violence.” (V. Katz, “Richard Prince at Barbara Gladstone,” Art in America, March, 2004, p. 127) Prince is clearly treading on ‘Warholian ground as a magus of contemporary American culture’ and has turned these otherwise-ordinary, albeit low brow, images of nurses into something iconic through repetition, reworking of original source material and careful choices of colour and composition. The paintings are made by scanning the original covers into a computer, producing inkjet prints which are transferred to canvases, and then painting over the printouts. The painting style is purposefully evocative of the postwar era that saw the rise of pulp fiction, the same era that gave birth to Abstract Expressionism. Combining the mass culture appeal of these retro campy book covers with a similarly retro painterly style, Prince has created what David Rimanelli calls a “blood, drippy splatter sampling of AbEx gesturalism.” (“Best of 2003,” Artforum, December 2003, p. 116) The Nurse paintings are stunning successes because of Prince’s ability to allude to the mid-century painters, the quintessential icons of American post-war painting. “The built-up layers and floating blocks of colour are
Richard Prince Surfing Nurse 2003 Inkjet print and acrylic on canvas. 162.5 x 106.7 cm. (64 x 42 in). Signed, titled and dated ‘R Prince SURFING NURSE 2003’ on the overlap.
Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York Exhibited EXHIBITED New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Richard Prince Nurse Paintings, 20 September – 25 October, 2003; Jevnaker, Kistefos Museum, Pulp 11, 13 May – 30 September, 2007 Literature M. Collings & R. Prince, ed., Richard Prince Nurse Paintings, New York, 2003, p. 62 (illustrated); M. Fineman, ‘The Pleasure Priniciple. Richard Prince’s Post-Pulp Art Take a New Step’ in Slate, 30 October, 2003; S.C. Regan, Women, Los Angeles, 2004 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay For the artist Richard Prince his interest in collecting has a major influence upon his artistic output: “I don’t see any difference now between what I collect and what I make. It’s become the same. What I’m collecting will, a lot of times, end up in my work.” (Richard Prince quoted in “Artist: Richard Prince ” New York Magazine, April 25, 2005) As a self-avowed bibliophile, books are some of the most important things that Prince collects, from rare first editions of great works of literature, to trashy novels which he chooses for their lurid over-the-top cover images. These covers, from the collection of ‘naughty nurse’ titles he has amassed over the years, provided Prince with the inspiration for a major series of paintings which were originally exhibited together in 2003 as the ‘Nurse Paintings’. Surfing Nurse is from this series, and embodies Prince’s unique ability to mine the American culture for visually compelling images which he appropriates and re-contextualises in order to critique the culture which produced those images. The nurse of the title is seen in profile, appearing demure or utterly absorbed in her task at hand, wearing a white surgical mask and hat which obscures all but the faintest glimpse of her blond hair and one closed eye, long lashed and framed with a perfectly groomed eyebrow. The rest of the painting tells us nothing about the woman, other than the fact that she was featured on the cover of a novel with the title ‘Surfing Nurse’, as the text hovering above her head in a wash of neon-pink announces. The vibrant blue painted surface of Surfing Nurse masks the rest of the original cover treatment, leaving behind only the female figure and the text. This generic figure, identified only by her profession, is a symbolic depiction of the fetishised role of the nurse within American culture – from pulp fictions to television dramas – as vixens and vamps, and potentially sinister women. Prince has struck a chord with the Nurse Paintings: in honing in on the anonymity of the female figures he lets them stand in as objects of desire as they were intended in their original context of the book covers. “The titillation has as much to do with nostalgia for the artifacts of a lost pulp culture as with sexual desire or even violence.” (V. Katz, “Richard Prince at Barbara Gladstone,” Art in America, March, 2004, p. 127) Prince is clearly treading on ‘Warholian ground as a magus of contemporary American culture’ and has turned these otherwise-ordinary, albeit low brow, images of nurses into something iconic through repetition, reworking of original source material and careful choices of colour and composition. The paintings are made by scanning the original covers into a computer, producing inkjet prints which are transferred to canvases, and then painting over the printouts. The painting style is purposefully evocative of the postwar era that saw the rise of pulp fiction, the same era that gave birth to Abstract Expressionism. Combining the mass culture appeal of these retro campy book covers with a similarly retro painterly style, Prince has created what David Rimanelli calls a “blood, drippy splatter sampling of AbEx gesturalism.” (“Best of 2003,” Artforum, December 2003, p. 116) The Nurse paintings are stunning successes because of Prince’s ability to allude to the mid-century painters, the quintessential icons of American post-war painting. “The built-up layers and floating blocks of colour are
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.jpg "Quelle: Christie's")
.jpg "Quelle: Christie's")
