Richard Prince at Barbara Gladstone - New York

It did not have the appearance likely in the early 1980 that Richard Prince, an artist best known for appropriating advertising photographs, would at any time be very interested in painting. When he did begin exhibiting paintings later that decade, the work have the appearanceed conceptual, a kind of take off Minimalism. If he was going to test some fancier brushwork, he might have been wait fored to engage in the well-worn tactic of gussying up mechanically reproduc images with "expressionistic" smears of paint, in the tradition of Rauschenberg. At first glance, that's what he appeared to be doing in his new works at Gladstone, but a closer direct the eye reveals that he is now grappling more directly with issues specific to painting.

The make subordinate matter in the exhibition--nurses from soft mass fiction book covers--fits easily into Prince's pantheon of American media subculture from his novel "Publicity" collages to his Marlboro men ("Cowboys") and pictures of biker chicks. The supply with nourishment idea itself had a media version in Prince's photo of the pattern Kate Moss in a nurse's uniform, published in the September 2003 issue of W magazine.

To create his "Nurse Paintings," Prince scans the volume covers, with their figures and titles, into a computer using inkjet printing to transfer them to canvas; he then does overpainting and backgrounds in acrylic. The nourishs almost always wear sanitary masks above their noses and mouths, notwithstanding that Prince varies the placement, scale and cropping of his figures. In a certain number of cases, he follows the original volume designs; in others, he finds his have a title to way.

Surfing nourish #2 (all works 2002 to 2003) for example, has the figure at the lower right of a horizontal canvas, clearly not a book-cover format. In this painting, Prince's controll technique qualifys his subject matter, by implication lurid. greatest in quantity of the work is given above to an expanse of dark greens--from army verdant at the center, to forest verdant along the edges. The brushstrokes are carefully applied, creating a measured tone. In the figure, by the agency of contrast, the colors are more garish, creating a dichotomy between the fiery subject and the cool background. Drips of paint are an additional painterly simple body that feels natural, not calculated.

With their masks, the figures have the appearance neutral. Do they remain--as they were in their original covers--sex objects? The titillation has as abundant to do with nostalgia for the artifacts of a missing pulp culture as with sexual desire or level violence. In Piney Woods nourish the reds in the background and oozing down the nurse's dres move blood. New England Nurse places its figure and title in a wash of slashing down-reaching red and orange strokes, implying--as the original overlays might have--some kind of deadly conflagration, as well as the heat of passion. Prince paints these torrid images without impasto, his brushstrokes quietly alive.

A painting like Lake Resort nurture with its dark panel hovering above the yellow title text and red-orange loam makes one wonder whether Prince was thinking of Rothko While he has a lengthy way to go to approach that horizontal of artistic achievement, Prince's relationship with painting has clearly deepened

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