RAY JOHNSON MAIL ART ISTRUCTIONAL DRAWING COLLAGE

RAY JOHNSON MAIL ART ISTRUCTIONAL DRAWING COLLAGE Ray Johnson (American, 1927-1995). Mail art by Ray Johnson, instructional collage on drawing, signed lower right corner "Ray Johnson." Sent to John Brook, no post mark as he lived down the street. Bio - Black Mountain alumnus Ray Johnson studied with Albers and Motherwell; was friends with Rauschenberg, Warhol, Johns, and Twombly. He is considered by some to be the founder of the mail art movement. Throughout the early stage of his career and spanning its duration, Johnson sought out the random and the ephemeral, incorporating chance operations into his artistic practice with “mail art.” He gradually built up an informal, hybrid network of friends, acquaintances, and strangers with whom he exchanged ideas and artworks by means of the postal system. By 1958, he began to write, “Please send to...” on his mailings, thereby creating even more sub-networks among the hundreds of correspondents in his greater mail art organization. By 1962, when it was named the “New York Correspondance [sic] School,” his virtual “school” of correspondents had become a network for a web of communication by mail that eventually spread across the nation and around the globe. Size: 5.75 x 3"

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