A blaze with salacious provocation, suspense, and steamy film noir ambiance, Runaway Nurse constitutes a quintessential expression of the very best of Richard Prince’s singular series of Nurse Paintings. At once seductive and anarchistic, alluring and aloof, Prince’s beautiful heroine is inspired by the scantily clad seductress in the 1948 film noir crime novel Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy, with the original illustration by artist James Avati. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye was made into a film in 1950, which was banned in Ohio for its sordid content, and is now considered a lost classic.

The present work’s title, Runaway Nurse, nods to a second vintage novel – the dime-store novel Runaway Nurse by Florence Stuart (Macfadden-Bartell, 1964), which belongs to the sub-genre of dime-store “nurse romance” pulp fiction. A lifelong voracious bibliophile, Prince compiled an extensive personal collects ion of dime-store novellas from the 1950s and 1960s that took as their protagonists paradigms of the eroticized nurse. Uniformly melodramatic, artificial, and exaggeratedly pulp, these books were the essence of pop culture at the dawn of contemporary mass consumerism. In the early 2000s Prince turned to his trove of theretofore unmined source material and conceptualized a new series of paintings based on the books’ cover art. The resultant canonic Nurse Paintings take as their subject the trope of the passive female nurse embroiled in an impossible love affair, simultaneously exploring, exploiting and contesting the erotic stereotype and gender construct of the iconic female bombshell, which had previously been elevated to the realms of high-art by artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. At the same t.mes , by appropriating work by anonymous uncredited pulp-artists, the Nurse Paintings encapsulate Prince’s complex conceptual project which has long sought to challenge and subvert notions of authorship, authenticity and identity in art through his signature technique of appropriation.

Lovingly and lavishly rendered with glowing luminous skin and a tenderly sculpted voluptuous figure, Runaway Nurse is simultaneously the most beautiful and most overtly sexual nurse within the series. Leaning against a brass bedframe, she presents herself to the viewer, her blouse draped open invitingly with her face turned in coy dissent. Beneath demurely downcast lashes, the signature nurse’s mask covers her nose and mouth, with her parted red lips still visible beneath. A motif consistent in the series, Prince’s masks presents him with a “way of unifying” these paintings whilst “also talking about identity” (the artist cited in Natalie Shukur, ‘Richard Prince,’ Russh Magazine, 2014). Creating a compelling dichotomy between innocence and iniquity, active and passive, victim and aggressor, Runaway Nurse further deals intimately with fundamental themes of identity, authenticity, and authorship by the artist’s calculated manipulation of source imagery. In the Nurse Paintings, Prince first scans the book jackets and enlarges the inkjet prints to canvas, then applies layers of acrylic paint on top to obscure and transform the original images. In the present work, layers of deep molten magenta obliterate the supporting character and interior background of Avati’s 1948 original composition, leaving only our wanton heroine and the hovering précis of Stuart’s 1964 novel: “Was young Nurse Winters enough of a woman to make the man she loved forget his past?”

By conflating the images of not one but two vintage novels – one a lost classic of film noir and another from the world of trashy pulp-fiction – Prince has created in Runaway Nurse a superlatively layered masterwork representing the very apogee of his complex conceptual project.

Having endlessly scrutinized the cultural mores of America in his seditious yet taxonomic approach to artmaking, at heart Prince is an editor of images, borrowing and transforming through juxtaposition and manipulation to recontextualize the familiar and banal. The low-culture of the working classes has always been the heartland of Prince’s practice; using archetypes of a typically late-twentieth-century brand of American popular culture – be it from the world of advertising, the bawdy jokes or cartoon funnies of newspapers and magazines, or the paperback world of pulp-fiction – Prince has found edification in its indigenous beauty. The Nurse Paintings are situated at the other end of a narrative arc that began with Prince’s iconic Cowboys in the late 1980s: replacing the masculine, heroic cowboy of his aloof re-photographed Marlboro advertisements, Prince’s provocative female characters boldly reconsider and re-evaluate with palpable maturity many of the themes prevalent to the Cowboys – from the manipulation of appropriated images and the glamor of mass culture to the mythologizing of gender roles and the death of the author – in an entirely innovative and markedly painterly manner. Possessing an unsettling yet magnetic noir-quality, the Nurse Paintings are similarly derived from the same countercultural precepts as the biker Girlfriends. Indeed, much like the Cowboys, the Girlfriends and Nurses conjure a retinue of desire and mine prescribed and trumped-up tropes of male desire and female objectification. In this vein, the present painting masterfully projects the polarity between desire and fear, vulnerability and violence, to the forefront of the artist’s appropriative agenda. Thwarting narrative constructs and authorial agency, Prince posits collects ive authorship as the means to confront and undo the codes of desire forged by consumer culture.

The Nurse Paintings are considered one of the most distinctive and highly prized series of Prince’s lauded career to date. While on the surface it is their sumptuous, fantastical, and seductive appearance that distinguishes them from the artist’s Joke paintings or Cowboy photographs, these three renowned series are in fact intimately connected through the equally firm roots they each take in the core ethos of Prince’s highly conceptual and pioneering practice. The pop appropriation that constitutes the essence of the Cowboy corpus is critical to the conception and execution of the Nurses; with his Joke paintings, these works share a dependence on borrowed text and kitsch humor. What is added here, to brilliant effect and with true bravado, is Prince’s riposte to Abstract Expressionism. Enlivened with heady brushstrokes, drips and splatters, the Nurse Paintings pay homage to the techniques pioneered by the legendary group of Abstract Expressionist artists working to redefine the contemporary landscape in the exact same era the pulp novel was at the height of its popularity. Powerful, provocative and beautifully haunting, Runaway Nurse exemplifies the intoxicating and intellectual rigor of Prince’s ground-breaking practice.

《逃脫的護士》畫面春光誘人、充滿懸疑色彩，煥發魅惑的黑色電影氣氛，是理查・普林斯獨一無二的「護士」系列的臻絕典例。驟眼看去，畫中人風情萬種、任性不羈，同時又顯得傲岸不群。本作靈感源自1948年何芮斯・麥考伊（Horace McCoy）的黑色電影犯罪小說《虎穴煞星》（Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye，或譯《吻別明天》）中打扮性感的勾魂女郎，原作插畫師為詹姆斯・阿法提（James Avati）。《虎穴煞星》於1950年拍成電影，因為內容不雅被俄亥俄州禁止上映，如今已成為世人心目中的失落經典。本作的標題取自一本廉價小說——佛羅倫斯・斯圖亞特的《逃脫的護士》（Macfadden-Bartell出版社，1964年），是「護士浪漫幻想」一類的廉價小說的亞文類。普林斯一向嗜書如命，曾悉心珍藏1950至1960年代以性感護士為主角的所有廉價小說。這類小說的情節普遍誇張失實、極為戲劇化，內容難登大雅之堂。那時，大眾消費主義逐漸興起，這些書籍可謂當時流行文化的完美縮影。在2000年代初，普林斯回歸這些他以往從未探索過的原材料，在書本的封面圖案中汲取靈感，構思出一個全新的作品系列。在這個經典的「護士」系列中，普林斯以位居弱勢、身陷一段不可能發生的戀愛關係的女護士為主題，探索並挑戰經典「妖艷美女」的性感定型與性別角色。這種人物形象，早前已被安迪・沃荷及羅伊・李奇登斯坦等藝術家提升至高雅藝術的領域。在本系列中，普林斯運用其標誌性的挪用技法，從默默無名的廉價作品中取材，貫徹並演繹其複雜的創作概念，以顛覆藝術的所有權、本真性和身份。

畫中的白衣女郎俏麗可人，肌膚充滿光澤、身材玲瓏浮凸，是整個「護士」系列中容貌最出眾、形象最性感的護士。這俏女郎倚著銅床架正面朝著觀者，上半身的襯衫完全敞開。她別過臉去，看似羞澀，但更似不屑。她眼簾低垂，標誌性的護士口罩遮蓋了鼻子和嘴巴，微張的朱唇在底下若隱若現。口罩是此系列的常見主題圖案，讓普林斯「能夠統一」這些作品，「同時探討身份概念」（引自藝術家，娜塔莉・舒庫撰，〈理查・普林斯〉，《Russh雜誌》，2014年）。藉此，畫作呈現純潔與罪惡、主動與被動、施害與被害的二元對立，並體現藝術家對原材料的精妙把控，深入研討身份、本真性和所有權等基本創作概念，引人入勝。創作「護士」系列時，普林斯會先掃描小說封面，然後將圖案放大打印在畫布上，再疊加多層壓克力彩，使原本的圖案模糊不清。在本作中，普林斯以阿法提的1948年原創封面為背景，在人物四周的空間塗上濃厚的深洋紅色，留下妖艷的女主角與斯圖亞特在這本1964年小說上撰寫的一句故事大要：「年輕的溫特斯護士有足夠的魅力，令她深愛的男人忘掉過去嗎？」

藉著糅合兩本舊式小說——如今失落的經典黑色電影犯罪小說和廉價小說的視覺元素，普林斯創出這幅充滿內涵、堪稱其巔峰之作的《逃脫的護士》。普林斯致力剖析美國本土的文化觀念，其創作充滿反叛意識，展現矛盾對立。他擅於挪用並加工圖像，將日常所見的通俗圖案巧妙並置，賦予它們全新面貌。工人階級的通俗文化是普林斯的重要靈感泉源，他常以二十世紀後期美國流行文化的典型圖像進行創作。不論廣告、報紙雜誌的黃色笑話和搞笑卡通，還是平裝廉價小說的插圖，普林斯均能在這些本土美學中獲得啟迪。普林斯的敘事體系始於1980年代末的經典「牛仔」系列，然而，「護士」系列的敘述角度可謂與它南轅北轍。普林斯採用「重攝」手法（Rephotography），以萬寶路廣告為藍本創出「牛仔」系列；在「護士」系列中，陽剛豪邁、英姿颯颯的牛仔換成了一位位性感誘人的女角，藉此重新探討並大膽挑戰「牛仔」系列所蘊涵的主題，包括對挪用圖像的嫻熟運用、大眾文化的魅力、性別角色的美化想像及「作者之死」的觀念，手法嫻熟、思維破格，充滿藝術性。「護士」系列作品呈黑色風格，既惹人不安又極為迷人，與普林斯的摩托車手「女友」系列的反文化意識有異曲同工之妙。與「牛仔」系列相似，「女友」系列和「護士」系列均可見物化的女性形象，這些圖像經過精心設計，顯得虛偽失真，展現男性的慾望投射。在本作中，普林斯利用挪用手法，將慾望與恐懼、脆弱與暴力等對立概念共冶一爐，盡呈紙上。藉著顛覆敘事結構與原創者的權威，普林斯以集體創作權破解並對抗消費文化所編纂的慾望符碼。

普林斯的事業生涯至今一直廣受讚譽，「護士」可謂其最具個性、最受推崇的系列之一。驟眼看去，飽滿的色澤、夢幻魅惑的氣息，是「護士」系列有別於「笑話」繪畫和「牛仔」攝影系列的元素。不過，上述三個知名系列均以普林斯的核心創作精神為本，彼此緊密相連，體現其概念豐富、破格獨特的創作手法。「牛仔」系列的核心精髓——流行文化的挪用，對「護士」系列的創作概念和手法的影響可謂至關重要。「護士」與「笑話」系列的相似之處，在於兩者均借用了別人的文字和庸俗的幽默感。「護士」系列視覺效果華麗，具有強烈的表現力，是普林斯對抽象表現主義的一記巧妙回應。這個系列的作品畫面生動活潑、筆觸輕快跳脫、顏料滴四處飛濺，借鑒了一些抽象表現主義藝術家前輩們的創作技法。在廉價小說大行其道的年代，這批藝術家們正在致力創作，為當代畫壇另闢新天地。本作畫面精美迷人、力量澎湃、挑釁性十足，體現普林斯知性迷人、別開生面的藝術風格。