Tate Modern Temporarily Removes "Spiritual America"

Cropped portion of Richard Prince photo of Brook Shields called “Spiritual Smerica”The Tate Modern removed a picture of Brooke Shields, as a naked 10-year-old in the bathtub, after police arrived on the scene. The Richard Prince artwork was sheduled to be part of the new show Pop Life, opening today at the Tate in London.

A Tate spokeswoman said that the display was “temporarily closed down” and the catalogue withdrawn from sale.

Although Pop Life is not exclusively focused on pornographic art, but rather the relationship between art and commerce in a post-Warhol world, the exhibition maintains a strong focus on porn as glamour.

Also: Naked Brooke Shields photo is an image for which you must write your own commentary. Adrian Searle for Guardian UK

Update on 2009-10-04 18:29 by Anne

Installation view of Takashi Murakami’s work at Pop Life, Tate Modern, featuring wall print Giant Magical Princess! She is Walking Down The Streets Of Akihabara! 2009. Photograph courtesy the artist/Kaikai Kiki Co Ltd/TateThe Observer’s Laura Cumming has written a informative review of London’s Tate Modern show Pop Life: Art in a Material World. Cumming’s review gave me a better perspective on the actual artistic value of the show.

“Spiritual America” remains temporarily closed. Viewing it before the closure, Cumming writes: 

Less arduous, at least in practical terms, is the exact facsimile of Richard Prince’s Spiritual America – open when I saw Pop Life, temporarily closed by police on grounds of obscenity. Spiritual America involved the rephotographing of Garry Gross’s notorious photograph for Playboy Press of a 10-year-old Brooke Shields wearing nothing but mascara. Prince gave it an ornamental frame, low lighting and rich red walls – these are the ‘quotation marks’ in which he supposedly offers his state of the nation address.

Even now, art historians insist upon this work as social critique: showing America back to America. I don’t see how they can tell. The work is silent – you might say dumb – on the subject of Gross’s unconscionable photograph. And not the least revelation of last year’s Serpentine retrospective was Prince’s lifelong interest in the low, the filthy and corrupted. Still, he fits the bill as maker of the highest-priced photographs in the world.

See also Richard Prince Art.