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RICHARD PRINCE | New England Nurse #1
Estimate
250,000 - 350,000 GBP
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Description
- Richard Prince
- New England Nurse #1
- acrylic on canvas on gatorboard
- 159.4 by 108.2 cm. 62 3/4 by 42 5/8 in.
- Executed in 2000.
Provenance
Gladstone Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005
Condition
Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the white is less grey and the illustration fails to convey the texture of the central canvas collage in the original. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
Created in 2000, New England Nurse #1 is one of the very first iterations in Richard Prince’s celebrated Nurse series: a body of imposing paintings that were first revealed to the public to great acclaim in 2003. Drawing on Prince’s own collection of trashy nurse-fantasy novellas of the 1950s and 60s, the Nurses (very much aligned with Prince’s previous Cowboys and Girlfriends) play with pervading gender stereotypes and explore the consciousness and desire at stake in archetypes of popular Americana. Presaging the full scale painting New England Nurse of 2002, a work that resides in the prestigious Rubell Family Collection, Miami, New England Nurse #1 foreshadows and anticipates the greater body of critically lauded Nurse paintings that were to follow in the ensuing years. In the Nurse paintings, and in counterbalance to the Cowboys, Prince replaced his macho protagonists with a pantheon of provocatively crass and sexually charged femme fatales. Associated with low-brow American culture, Prince's choice of archetypes illuminates the artist’s interest in both personal and collective identity. The multivalent voices of the Cowboy, Girlfriend and Nurse, provide multiple readings of divergent personas via a masquerade of stereotypical characters. In this way, Prince engages with prescribed identities determined by social and cultural codes, and looks to both critique and celebrate the darker underbelly implicit within these constructed myths.
The Nurses were created by scanning and enlarging the cover of pulp-fiction hospital-based romance novels, objects that, for a professed bibliophile, held great fascination for Prince. These scanned images were printed onto canvas using an inkjet printer after which he manipulated the existing compositions by editing out secondary characters, obscuring text, and isolating female protagonists through scumbled and expressively applied layers of paint.
In New England Nurse #1, the illustrator’s original wholesome yet seductive image is disrupted by a stack of words that are by turns clinical, gory, and insalubrious. Prince subverts the stereotypical female ciphers of the mid-twentieth century and presents female sexuality as both desirable and perhaps empowered in her contamination. At the same, however, white paint is smeared across the nurse’s mouth and she is effectively gagged. Nonetheless, it is arguable that it is the sexualised persona given to her by her original illustrator that is silenced. The white paint thus becomes a powerful tool to convey Prince’s project of identity crisis in contemporary image culture: “I made a mistake painting all this white – this is when I say I get lucky… I realized that was going to be the contribution to the image, to put a mask on these various nurse illustrations. It was a way of unifying and also talking about identity” (Richard Prince, quoted in: Natalie Shukur, ‘Richard Prince,’ RusshMagazine, 2014, online). By masking the nurse’s mouth, he silences the desirability prescribed by the novel’s original illustration, thereby unmasking and challenging the ways in which society and culture has historically determined identity.
Across a diverse oeuvre that challenges modes of contemporary representation, Richard Prince has mined photographs, VHS tapes, art history and literature. He consumes, collects, and manipulates text and image, all for the sake of curating the trappings of American culture.
The Nurses were created by scanning and enlarging the cover of pulp-fiction hospital-based romance novels, objects that, for a professed bibliophile, held great fascination for Prince. These scanned images were printed onto canvas using an inkjet printer after which he manipulated the existing compositions by editing out secondary characters, obscuring text, and isolating female protagonists through scumbled and expressively applied layers of paint.
In New England Nurse #1, the illustrator’s original wholesome yet seductive image is disrupted by a stack of words that are by turns clinical, gory, and insalubrious. Prince subverts the stereotypical female ciphers of the mid-twentieth century and presents female sexuality as both desirable and perhaps empowered in her contamination. At the same, however, white paint is smeared across the nurse’s mouth and she is effectively gagged. Nonetheless, it is arguable that it is the sexualised persona given to her by her original illustrator that is silenced. The white paint thus becomes a powerful tool to convey Prince’s project of identity crisis in contemporary image culture: “I made a mistake painting all this white – this is when I say I get lucky… I realized that was going to be the contribution to the image, to put a mask on these various nurse illustrations. It was a way of unifying and also talking about identity” (Richard Prince, quoted in: Natalie Shukur, ‘Richard Prince,’ RusshMagazine, 2014, online). By masking the nurse’s mouth, he silences the desirability prescribed by the novel’s original illustration, thereby unmasking and challenging the ways in which society and culture has historically determined identity.
Across a diverse oeuvre that challenges modes of contemporary representation, Richard Prince has mined photographs, VHS tapes, art history and literature. He consumes, collects, and manipulates text and image, all for the sake of curating the trappings of American culture.