Ray Johnson: CorrespondencesLike Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, and later Andy Warhol and Jim Rosenquist, Johnson combined the signs and symbols of contemporary culture with the lessons of abstraction to develop a new lexicon of forms. A pioneer in the use of 'found' images and techniques of mechanical reproduction, Johnson created in 1955 what may have been the first informal happening. Johnson first created 'mail art' in the fifties. These were part collage, part manifesto, part parody; he often instructed recipients to 'add to', 'return to', or 'send to', spawning an interactive art form, a continuous happening, that pre-figured electronic mail. Johnson was the nerve center of this pre-digital netscape that spread around the nation and, eventually, the world, which continues to flourish today. By the eighties, Johnson was a legend in the artistic community. Ray Johnson: correspondences, offers the first opportunity for in-depth examination of the work of an artist who reflected and dissected many of the aesthetic, cultural, and theoretical preoccupations of the last forty years; a figure whose impact and influence will finally be made known. |
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abstract Ad Reinhardt aesthetic American Art Andy Warhol April Art Museum art world artist associations Black Mountain College bunny Camp cardboard collages color Contemporary Art correspondence art correspondence from Ray Curator David Bourdon DEAR Detroit Dick Higgins drawing ENVELOPE AN ENVELOPE event Eyelash Fan Club Feigen fragments Gallery GROUP EXHIBITIONS Henry Martin idea identity images interview James Dean John JOHNSON RAY JOHNSON Johnson's art Johnson's collages Joseph Cornell Judith Malina letters Lucy magazine mail art Marcel Duchamp Marianne Moore Marilyn Monroe Meeting Mother's Potato Masher moticos Museum of American Museum of Art November NYCS objects October ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS painting person photograph Pop Art portrait Rauschenberg Ray Johnson RAY JOHNSON RAY Ray's reference Richard Lippold Robert Rosenquist Selected correspondence SHELLEY DUVALL silhouettes Snake Spam radio Spiselman Stein surface things University visual Wexner Center Whitney Museum William Wilson Untitled word wrote York Correspondence School