Lauren: So along with mail art came the New York Correspondence School. Wilson Collection of Ray Johnson THE NEW YORK CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL He wasn’t alone in doing this, but I would say that he was uniquely committed to it he stayed with it, and while he was operating in other areas, he worked in this epistolary, or letter-writing, way into the 1990s. Mail art, in this way, is a uniquely collaborative endeavor and relies on the participation and willingness of others-to not simply receive, but to send.Ĭaitlin: Ray really understood the postal service as a technology or a medium-a means of distribution or broadcasting even, and a way of getting his work into circulation. He would direct recipients to “please add to and send to” and cultivated a network of correspondence in which new and indeterminate possibilities for artistic production opened up in the time and space between sender and receiver. Jordan: Ray Johnson is often considered the “grandfather of mail art.” He used the postal system as a social interface and mode of production, in which the medium (the envelope, etc.) became an integral part of the message. It’s seemingly a simple term, but could you explain briefly what mail art is and what it entails? Was Johnson the main proponent of this approach? Did he invent it in a way? So there was this aspect of underground celebrity, almost rumors about “Who is this Ray Johnson? What’s he doing?” And then with this show in 1965 at the Willard Gallery, he moved into the kind of space where you could have a New York Times review, and they presented him in this mysterious and provocative way. He was quite well known at this point in time for his work outside of the gallery system-for his graphic design, for his mail art, for his performance. It was the first gallery show that he had done in about a decade, and it’s true: Johnson’s practice was so varied. It was published in the New York Times in April 1965 by the critic Grace Glueck, who had just seen one of Johnson’s first gallery exhibitions, where he was showing his collages. Could you give us a brief introduction to, or overview of, Ray Johnson?Ĭaitlin Haskell: I might start with just a little bit of context around that quote, “New York’s most famous unknown artist,” actually. You mention in the exhibition description that he had been called “New York’s most famous unknown artist” and that he remains a somewhat enigmatic figure, perhaps because he worked in so many various and intersecting formats. Lauren Schultz: Caitlin and Jordan, I thought we could start by talking about Ray Johnson himself and who he was as an artist. and Frances Comer Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Jordan Carter, associate curator (former), Modern and Contemporary Art
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