Richard Prince — Menthol Wars

Printed Matter, New York, 2009
Facsimile reprint of the 1980 artist’s book
Staple-bound wrappers
22 pp.
14.1 × 21.3 cm
Black-and-white offset printing
Edition of 2,000
Unsigned facsimile reprint

Condition: Very good. Light handling and minor surface wear to wrappers, faint rubbing to black cover, clean interior, staples intact.

Originally published in October 1980 to coincide with a Richard Prince window installation at Printed Matter’s original 7 Lispenard Street location, Menthol Wars belongs to Prince’s early sequence of narrative artist books, alongside War Pictures and Menthol Pictures. Printed Matter reissued this facsimile in 2009 for Richard Prince: Calling All Readers, curated by John McWhinnie at the New York Art Book Fair.

The book sits before the more stabilised image of Prince as the artist of cowboys, jokes, nurses, and rephotographed American desire. Here the material is thinner and stranger: short texts, names, overheard voices, social drift, cigarettes, style, movies, records, and conversational fragments. The book form functions less as catalogue than as distribution system — a cheap printed support for fiction, pose, and borrowed atmosphere.

As a facsimile, the 2009 edition is also a second object: not the scarce 1980 original, but its controlled return through Printed Matter. A re-entry of early Prince into the artist-book market, produced through the same institution that first held the window installation. The copy becomes a readable substitute, a later administrative version of an early downtown object.

Original period content, later institutional reprint.
A minor book object from Prince’s pre-market vocabulary.

Shipping and handling included in listed price. Ships flat / protected.