Richard Prince – Untitled Nurse (2017)

Louisiana Poster with the work, Untitled (Nurse) 2017 , by the American artist, Richard Prince (b. 1949), which Louisiana presents from November 2022 at the exhibition, Same Man, in the exhibition series, Louisiana on Paper. With his famous re-photographs of the glossy magazine advertisements, Prince was part of the 1970s Picture Generation that did not see painting as relevant. But later the painting still attracted Prince – as here, where a nurse on a book cover has been reinterpreted.

Richard Prince's many years of practice with the concrete work of the hand with and on paper helped send him in the direction of painting. Based on the culture of his own youth, Prince takes special magazines, joke drawings, LP inner sleeves, pinup pictures and pulp novels – and paints, shades, comments, crosses out, uses correction varnish, doodles and spray paint. It testifies to a clear sensibility for painting and implies a critical challenge to formats and hierarchies.

Prince has no relationship with nursing as such, but he is a collector with a capital S and stumbled upon medical novels at a market. Prince had the covers transferred to canvas, painted on and here we see one of the results. The mask is essential. It not only hides the woman's personal radiance, it is also Richard Prince's contribution to the picture and acts as a mysterious, small white canvas.