[citation needed], In spite of the many links and similarities between historical avant-garde, alternative art practices (visual poetry, copy art, artist's books) and mail art, one aspect that distinguishes the creative postal network from other artistic movements, schools or groups (including Fluxus) is the way it disregards and circumvents for the commercial art market. Ray Johnson suggested (with a pun) that "mail art has no history, only a present", and mail artists have followed his playful attitude in creating their own mythologies. The rubber stamp officially used for franking mail, already utilized by Dada and Fluxus artists, has been embraced by mail artists who, in addition to reusing ready-made rubber stamps, have them professionally made to their own designs. The artists who meet each other in the Eternal Network have taken these steps. Mail artists value the process of exchanging ideas and the sense of belonging to a global community that is able to maintain a peaceful collaboration beyond differences of language, religion and ideology; this is one aspect that differentiates the mail art network from the world of commercial picture postcards and of simply "mailed art."[31]. Includes Biography, Selected Works, and Exhibitions. Mail art had no history, since – unlike a modernist art that seems to reside in an independent realm of ever-evolving formal development – it could be seen to place itself squarely in the realm of social exchanges, that is the realm whose entire principle of circulation and reciprocity is kept in check by the system of gifts. Mail art (also known as postal art and correspondence art) is a populist artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the postal service. [15] Other Fluxus artists have been involved since the early 1960s in the creation of artist's postage stamps (Robert Watts, Stamp Dispenser, 1963), postcards (Ben Vautier, The Postman's Choice, 1965: a postcard with a different address on each side) and other works connected to the postal medium. However, Xerography has been a key technology in the creation of many short-run periodicals and zines about mail art, and for the printed documentation that has been the traditional project culmination sent to participants. In a way, it was a performance of art to an audience of one. - Loredana Parmesani[42], Ray Johnson, the New York Correspondance School, and Fluxus, Philosophy and norms of the mail artist network, Media and artistic practices in the creation of mail artworks, Francesco Vincitorio, "Informalista o videoartista? His preferred medium was collage, that quintessentially twentieth-century art form that reflects the increased (as the century wore on) collision of disparate visual and verbal information that bombards modern man. 30 x 13 1/2" (76.2 x 34.3 cm). [34] Furthermore, attempts have been made to document and define the history of a complex and underestimated phenomenon that has spanned five decades. [citation needed]. Like so many other avant-garde artists (who left painting and behind) Johnson was eager to cut through the historicist temporality that informed modern art history and art production, with its logic of continual succession and supersession of artistic tradition. ... Well known for his involvement in the mail art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Johnson created the "New York Correspondance School" artist club in 1962 and distributed his postcards, … It can create paradigms for the reverential sharing and preservation of the earth's water, soil, forests, plants and animals. The ethereal networker aesthetic calls for guiding that dream through action. Participants are invited by network members to take part in collective projects or unjuried exhibitions in which entries are not selected or judged. 1958-1994.. [Ray Johnson; Online Archive of California. Printed matter and ephemera are often circulated among mail artists, and after artistic treatment, these common items enter into the mail art network. "[20] The exhibition was to have an historical aspect as well as showing new mail art, and to mediate the two aspects Cohen edited the material sent to Franklin Furnace, breaking an unwritten but commonly accepted custom that all works submitted must be shown. Raymond Edward "Ray" Johnson was an American artist. A sub-group of envelope art has its genesis in the Grateful Dead Ticket Service. It opens up the possibility of a democratic aesthetic in which any relationship, between anyone, can be the moment of creation and … Conceptual artist Ray Johnson (1927–1995) was a pioneer of mail art, utilizing an ever-evolving lexicon of graphic and textual elements in his work. Ray Johnson’s Postal Performance / book edited and exhibition curated by Ina Blom (National Museum of Contemporary Art : Oslo 2003). "[7], The mail art philosophy of openness and inclusion is exemplified by the "rules" included in invitations (calls) to postal projects: a mail art show has no jury, no entry fee, there is no censorship, and all works are exhibited. And the emphatic return to these artistic concerns in contemporary art is among the things that accounts for the actuality of Ray Johnson’s lifelong artwork. [35] Artist Jerry Dreva of the conceptual art group Les Petits Bonbons created a set of stamps and sent them to David Bowie who then used them as the inspiration for the cover of the single "Ashes to Ashes" released in 1980. Donna De Salvo & Catherine Gugis (editors). Performances recorded on film or video are communicated via DVD and movie files over the internet. Get this from a library! Her entourage walked out with her during the ensuing melee. It initially developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School and the Fluxus movements of the 1960s, though it has since developed into a global movement that continues to the present. Andy Warhol is quoted as saying he would pay ten dollars for anything by Johnson. The night preceding the second panel on February 24, Carlo Pittore, John P. Jacob, Chuck Welch a.k.a. Frank, Peter, E.F. Higgins III, Rudolf Ungváry. [27], By the 1990s, mail art's peak in terms of global postal activities had been reached, and mail artists, aware of increasing postal rates, were beginning the gradual migration of collective art projects towards the web and new, cheaper forms of digital communication. While illustrated envelopes have been around since ye olden days, Mail Art turned the postal system into a medium itself. The manifesto concludes, "We have learned this from our own mistakes." He corresponded with global artists, writers, and thinkers, including Richard C. and Bob Ray. In contrast to the social contract set up by the international mail art movement as it evolved on its own accord (a contract informed by ideals of infinite sharing, of non-competition, of giving without thoughts of return, while resting assured that giver’s receive etc. [21], The excluded works were ultimately added to the exhibition by the staff of the Franklin Furnace, but the events surrounding it and the panels revealed ideological rifts within the mail art community. Many of Johnson's missives to his network featured a hand drawn version of what became a personal logo or alter-ego, a bunny head. [1][8], The term "mail art" was coined in the 1960s. Initially it was Johnson himself sending out small collage-like works to a mailing list, urging people to keep them, to add to them, to change them, to send them to others, to return to sender. He organized meetings and assemblies (of the NYCS members), but these meetings were without content or purpose, as if mere gatherings of names on a mailing list. While the vast majority of correspondence art or mail art activities take place in the mail, today's new forms of electronic communication blur the edges of that forum. [40], "Correspondence art is an elusive art form, far more variegated by its very nature than, say, painting. Ray, Hofstra, Video, photos, John Cale, The Correspondance School, Ina Blom, Links, Bruce Nauman, Heckscher Museum, Joseph Cornell, Stanley Twardowicz , Andy Warhol, Death, Film, Nassau County Museum of Art, Walt Whitman, Jasper Johns, The Cranbrook Academy of Art, Picasso, Interview, Fluxus, William Wilson. Ticket Service ( editors ray johnson mail art he corresponded with global artists, writers, the! Staples of mail artworks, particularly since the advent of mail art started decorating their envelopes with art and. 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