• Richard Prince — Purple 20 Years: The Richard Prince Purple Book, special edition for Purple Fashion no. 18, Purple Institute, Paris, 2012. White softcover with purple halftone "20 Years" typography overlaid on a collage of black-and-white celebrity photographs with handwritten captions and DVD barcodes.
  • Richard Prince — Purple 20 Years: The Richard Prince Purple Book, interior spread. Left: photograph of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman with handwritten caption: "Linda Carter went onto star in the TV show The L Word. True or False?" Right: photograph of male figure with handwritten caption referencing Dale Stone and mainstream film career. Purple Institute, Paris, 2012.
  • Richard Prince — Purple 20 Years: The Richard Prince Purple Book, interior spread. Left: "Bird Talk" text fragment. Right: signed publicity photograph of Karen Black with DVD barcode for The Flaming Lips' The Fearless Freaks affixed upper right. Purple Institute, Paris, 2012.
  • Richard Prince — Purple 20 Years: The Richard Prince Purple Book, interior page. Black-and-white photograph of Neve Campbell with handwritten caption by Richard Prince: "Neve Campbell was one of the fem fatales in the movie 'Wild Things.' Why did she object to doing the nude scene with Matt Dylan?" Purple Institute, Paris, 2012.
  • Richard Prince — Purple 20 Years: The Richard Prince Purple Book, interior spread. Left: black-and-white photograph of Keanu Reeves in wetsuit with handwritten caption: "Keanu Reeves favourite film is Tarzan. Name at least four actors who played Tarzan." Right: photograph of Boston Red Sox player with handwritten caption: "Who was this Red Sox player? What was his first at bat?" Purple Institute, Paris, 2012
  • Richard Prince — Purple 20 Years: The Richard Prince Purple Book, back cover. Zadig & Voltaire advertisement: model kneeling on parquet floor holding an Indian motorcycle helmet, wearing leopard-print jacket and black wide-brim hat. Purple Institute, Paris, 2012.
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Purple Institute

Richard Prince — Purple 20 Years: The Richard Prince Purple Book

Richard Prince — Purple 20 Years: The Richard Prince Purple Book

£100.00 GBP
£100.00 GBP
Sale Sold out
Taxes included.

Purple Institute, Paris, 2012

Special edition produced for Purple Fashion no. 18
Published for the 20th anniversary of Purple magazine
78 pp.
Softcover
Pictorial paper wrappers
Approx. 28 × 20.5 cm / 11 × 8 in.
Colour and black-and-white reproductions throughout
Text and image work by Richard Prince

Condition: Near fine. Negligible bumping to front wrapper. Light handling wear only. Clean internally.

Special edition made by Richard Prince for Purple Fashion no. 18, marking twenty years of Purple magazine. The publication brings together fragments of Prince's “Bird Talk” texts with collages made from celebrity headshots, film stills, promotional photographs, album material, and other collected image debris.

A fashion magazine supplement as artist book.
A Richard Prince object routed through Purple.
Celebrity material, handwritten captions, rhetorical questions, commercial images, and borrowed surfaces.

The book sits close to Prince’s long use of existing cultural material: publicity photographs, entertainment residue, fan-image circulation, soft celebrity, advertising language, and the unstable line between collecting and authorship. The source image remains visible. The gesture is in the re-captioning, grouping, and return to circulation.

Here, Purple is not only publisher but frame. Fashion magazine, artist book, anniversary object, and promotional support occupy the same printed form. Prince’s image-world is placed inside another image-world, then released as a magazine-adjacent edition.

A secondary object made from secondary images.
The found photograph becomes layout.
The caption becomes authorship.
The magazine becomes support.

Shipping and handling included in the listed price.

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