Naked Brooke Shields photo removed from Tate

The controversial photograph of a naked Brooke Shields aged 10, turned into an artwork by the American Richard Prince, has been removed from the Tate Modern on the eve of the public opening of its new show, Pop Life. The work's removal follows a visit to the London gallery by the Metropolitan police.

A Tate spokeswoman confirmed that the Prince work, titled Spiritual America, and dating back to 1983, had been "temporarily closed down" and the exhibition catalogue withdrawn from the gallery shop.

Spiritual America, which has been shown recently in New York without controversy, is a photograph of a photograph. The original was commissioned in 1975 by Brooke Shields's mother from a commercial photographer, Gary Gross, when she was trying to help her daughter get into films. The photograph shows the 10-year-old naked and heavily made up.

In 1983, Prince, an artist who often "borrows" iconic photographs for his work,  re-photographed it, placed it in a gilt frame, and displayed in the window of a run-down shop in New York's Lower East Side.

The Tate Modern had sought legal advice before displaying the work. But when the police attended, following coverage in the media, they advised that it could break obscenity laws. A Scotland Yard source told the Guardian that the photograph was of potential concern because it was of a 10-year-old, and could be viewed as sexually provocative.

There has been no reaction so far from Richard Prince, nor from the subject of the photo, Brooke Shields, who went on to make her name playing a prostitute in the 1978 Louis Malle film, Pretty Baby and, two years later, appearing in the famous ad for Calvin Klein jeans - "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing" - is likely to be delighted: in 1981 she tried to buy back the original negatives, but failed.

In an essay in the exhibition catalogue, now withdrawn, Jack Bankowsky, who co-curated Pop Life, describes "a bath-damp and decidedly underage Brooke Shields". He writes: "When Prince invites us to ogle Brooke Shields in her prepubescent nakedness, his impulse has less to do with his desire to savour the lubricious titillations that it was shot to spark in its original context... than with a profound fascination for the child star's story." ·