Herewith, a germ of an idea

Check this out:



Richard Prince's "Nurse in Hollywood". A classic Prince. I couldn't find an image of the actual painting--this one seems to be a poster for a Guggenheim show. I don't know what that eBay business is along the bottom.

Anyway, I was staring at a picture of the actual painting a day or so ago and thought it would be interesting to paint a similar painting, title it "Nurse: St. Vincents" and put it up for annotation outside the now-closed St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village. See, as per business as usual, what people have to say.

The problem (which, I haven't decided, in this particular case, may not be a problem) is that the closing of St. Vincent's happened a week or so ago, and I'm behind the news.

In a perfect world, I'd have been out there when everybody else was demonstrating against the closure. This, dear reader, in case I have to remind you, isn't a perfect world.

All of which brings me to the larger problem, and the related germ of an idea:

There are a lot of people, or situations, to whom/which I'd like to respond in a timely manner with an annotated painting. Goldman Sachs VP "The Fabulous Fab" certainly being one of them. But, by and large, I just can't paint the stuff that quickly. I frequently find myself behind the news.

So I'm considering exhibiting works in progress. Let's just say, for example, that something horrible has just happened at J.P Morgan/Chase/Bear Stearns--whatever they are calling the thing these days--and I need to bing out a picture of Jamie Dimon. Maybe they were packaging synthetic CDOs that were designed to fail, selling them to idiots and/or unsuspecting hedge fund managers, all the while shorting them like crazy, and got caught by the Feds.

I know this would never happen. I'm just thinking out loud.

Anyway, I slap down the first layer of my Dimon painting, neatly letter the title across the top (The Annotated Dimon, for example) so people have some idea of what is happening, and exhibit it for annotation the next day.

Okay, so some people write some stuff on it.

Then I take it back home, continue to paint it.

Take it out the next day. People write more stuff.

Then I take it back home, continue to paint it.

Etc.

The advisability of this strategy is TBD. It remains a germ of an idea.