The reporter stopped him outside the Orientalia bookstore in New York City where he worked. It was 1955 and the New York School of Abstract Expressionists was in full bloom. Eisenhower was in the White House and Elvis was on the charts. Ray Johnson, fresh out of the New York Art Students League and Black Mountain College, a "bookish-looking guy with hair short as a newly-cut lawn," was talking on the record for the inaugural issue of the Village Voice about moticos and what they were and weren't. The reporter had heard about Ray from a friend who "inexplicably found himself on a moticos mailing list one day". Johnson said his mailing list had grown to some two-hundred people and included such diverse people as the noted socialite and party-giver Elsa Maxwell as well as James Barr of the Museum of Modern Art. I've got a big pile of things at home which will make moticos. They're really collages - paste-ups of pictures and pieces of paper, and so on - but that sounds too much like what they really are, so I call them moticos. It's a good word because it's both singular and plural and you can pronounce it how you like. However, I'm going to get a new word soon."

The new word Johnson was searching for came some seven years latter courtesy of Edward Plunkett, who named the emerging postal network the New York Correspondence School of Art, a play on both the prevailing New York School of painters active at the time and schools of art by correspondence in which famous artists teach commercial art through the mails. The Correspondence School shortly thereafter became the Correspondance School, further accentuating the intertwining relationships Johnson had created through the post.

Johnson had an uncanny knack for mixing and matching the diverse and distant. This found expression not only in his collages and mailings, but in the New York Correspondance Club meetings, where seating lists were prepared beforehand inducing correspondents to meet one another in poetic environments of Johnsons' devising. The thematic meetings included a stilt walking event, fan club meetings for Marcel Duchamp and Paloma Picasso, and "nothings", which were conducted as alternatives to the more prevalent "happenings" of the era.

Moticos became a mainstay among the New York artworld incrowd. Johnson was as close to emergent mainstream artstars Robert Raushenberg and Andy Warhol as he was to members of the experimental Fluxus group. In 1965, Fluxus participant Dick Higgins published Johnsons' book, The Paper Snake, under the Something Else Press imprint, a collage of Johnsons' moticos which Higgins had received over the years. It became the first printed book of what we now know as mail art. But at that time it wasn't an art movement, it was simply fun. And yet, it drew upon such Modernist precedents as Marcel Duchamp sending quixotic postcards to his patrons and neighbors the Arensbergs, and the Italian Futurists mailing postcards of tin. Yves Klein, the Nouveau Realist creator of Klein International Blue, commemorated his invention with a postage stamp that was officially sanctioned by the French postal service. His fellow Nouveau Realist artists Arman and Daniel Spoerri, were pioneering rubber stamp artists, following the earlier lead of Dada artist Kurt Schwitters, who incorporated rubber stamp impressions into his collages. Mail art could claim a history concurrent with the rise of Modernism.

Through the postal weavings of Ray Johnson and the occasional articles about him in art journals, mail art continued to gain an underground following throughout the sixties. At the start of the following decade a major step toward the expansion of mail art took place when Johnson and Whitney Museum of American Art curator, Marcia Tucker, organized a "New York Correspondance School of Art" exhibition at the Museum in the Fall of 1970. The show was composed of whatever was sent in by Johnsons' correspondents who were simply instructed to forward work to the Whitney.

In 1973, Ken Friedman organized the "Omaha Flow Systems" exhibition at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska . These exhibits and other shows centering around works of art and information submitted through the postal system, such as "Mail Art" by Jean-Marc Poinsot held during the VII Biennale de Paris (1971) and "Fluxshoe" curated by David Mayor and others in England (1972) set the standard for the many mail art shows which flourished in the seventies. All works were accepted; no juries or fees were imposed; and contributors were sent back some form of documentation for their participation. In my sourcebook, International Artists Cooperation: Mail Art Shows, 1970-1985, I document the growth of the mail art show from five in 1971 to seventy-five in 1979. By 1983, this number had exploded to one-hundred and eighty-seven.

Other events that changed the course of mail art in the early seventies included widely-read magazine articles in large circulation magazines. In the January/February 1973 issue of Art in America, David Zack had a cover story called, "An Authentik and Historikal Discourse on the Phenomenon of Mail Art". But even more important was the appearance of a two-part article on the medium by respected San Francisco art critic Thomas Albright in Rolling Stone (April 13 and 27, 1972). The wide circulation of the trendy magazine shifted interest in the newly emerging artform from the isolated artworld to a general population that was interested in social and political as well as artistic alternatives.

Suddenly one could dive head first into the Eternal Network of international artists by obtaining one of the many mailing lists that were circulating in the postal underground. These lists could be obtained from the documentation of mail art shows, Ken Friedmans' New York Weekly Breeder magazine, and the Image Bank Request Lists that were published in FILE Magazine.

FILE magazine served as an international switchboard of artists becoming interested in the Eternal Network,as Fluxus artist Robert Filliou described the flowering postal network of artists becoming interested in alternatives. Indeed, FILE itself was an alternative artist publication edited by the Canadian art collective General Idea. FILE proved an important touchstone for postal artists and greatly increased knowledge of the medium among European artists.

Klaus Groh of West Germany was an early participant in European mail art activities who remains active to this day. His International Artist Cooperation (IAC) newsletters, published in small xerox editions, further spread the news about cooperative projects initiated by members of the Eternal Network. Groh also started a modest publishing enterprise, which attracted a host of participants. For a small fee ($6), artists could have limited editions of their artists' books printed. Such people as Clemente Padin (Uruguay), Filliou (France), Friedman (USA), Endre Tot (Hungary), Miroljub Todorovic (Yugoslavia), Davi Det Hompson (USA) and Robin Crozier (England) participated in the project and remained active networkers throughout the seventies.

Polish artist Pawel Petasz initiated the Commonpress periodical project in 1977, which became an important networking vehicle for several reasons. By establishing a revolving editorship of the magazine, with each participant encouraged to publish an edition with his own theme and format, Petasz set in motion an ongoing international performance that saw some sixty issues published in seven years. The history of the Commonpress project parallels the development of mail art as a global movement. While the first issue was published by Petasz in Poland, successive issues were conceived by editors in Holland, West Germany, the United States, Italy, Brazil, England, Belgium, Argentina, Switzerland, Hungary, Australia, Canada and East Germany.

Mail art began to incorporate numerous evolving marginal art mediums under its banner. Besides artists' books and periodicals, they included rubber stamps, artist postage stamps, photocopy (xerox) art, performance, video, audio, visual poetry and computers.

Artist postage stamps, which were first created by Fluxus and Nouveau Realist artists as well as participants in the New York Correspondance School of Art, were first presented as an art medium at the exhibition, "Artist Stamps and Stamp Images," curated by James Warren Felter at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada, in 1974. Thirty-five artists from nine countries participated in this pioneering exhibition of what was to become an increasingly important genre of mail art.

Rubber Stamps were a shared bond in the emerging mail networks. It seemed that everyone had his or her official seal. In 1974, French artist Herve Fisher gathered together these rubber stamps impressions in his anthology, Art and Marginal Communication: Rubber Stamp Art Activity (Art et Communication Marginale: Tampons D'Artistes). In 1978, The Rubber Stamp Album was published in the United States, written by Joni Miller and Lowry Thompson. Thompson went on to edit the magazine Rubberstampmadness, which greatly expanded participation in the genre, and indeed, created a new industry centered around the use of visual rubber stamps for mailing, as well as for other decorative purposes. Xerox art was another important ingredient which fueled the explosion of mail art activity. Johnsons' moticos were often accompanied by mimeographed writings, but in the sixties the photocopy medium became widely accessible. While certain mail artists crafted skilled one-of-a-kind creations to send via the post, others would use the xerox medium to bombard lists (such as the Image Bank Request Lists) with mass mailings. This resulted not only in an widening network of participants and recipients, but in an increasing condemnation of "quick-kopy" mail art. As early as 1973, FILE magazine published a letter from Robert Cumming responding to the "impersonal exercise of hitting everyone on the request lists". His letter generated general discussion and one of the first controversies in mail art.

By the middle seventies, most of the big names in the artworld who participated in Johnsons' New York Correspondance School became dropouts due to the slap-dash nature of the medium. On Kawara, a participant in Fluxus and noted conceptualist, who had became well known for sending postcards stating the time he woke up each day, switched to painting. Another postcard series, featuring the continuing adventures of 100 boots crossing America under the guidance of California artist Eleanor Antin, completed its' journey, and the artist moved on to video and performance works. Gilbert and George were also doing "postcard sculpture" during this same time period. They too left the network to pursue full-time mainstream art careers.

Rather then see this flight of established art professionals as a diminishing of the energy in the genre, mail art was beginning to accomplish a long cherished strategy of the avant-garde to break down the distinctions between artists and non/artists, and indeed, between art and life itself. While some mainstream artists such as Christo and Carl Andre continued to contribute to mail art shows well into the eighties, new participants began to emerge from divergent sectors of society, and from an increasing number of countries. As the network expanded, contributors appeared from the audio cassette underground and 'zine culture. Although rooted in the artworld, mail art gained a social and political face as well.

Following the lead of the earlier New York Correspondance School meetings, participants in mail art not only mailed works to each other, but met each other. This culminated in the Decentralized Worldwide Mail Art Congresses of 1986. Congress organizers, H. R. Fricker and G1/2nther Ruch, had originally intended for participants to gather in their native Switzerland for a centralized correspon-dance. But when they asked for comments to their proposal, network participants stressed the decentralized nature of the medium, and so it came to be that Congresses were held "wherever two or more mail artists meet to discuss networking concerns." During the course of the Congress year, some eighty meetings were held in twenty-five countries with the participation of over five-hundred artists.
Another potent force in mail art networking in the late eighties was Neoism. Neoism was a shared myth between art networkers, both a bond and a parody. A strategy which consisted of each participant re-interpreting and adding to the established mythology of the pseudo-movement, Neoism was an open concept in that each participant could contribute to and elaborate upon a given structure. What Neoism proved is that disparate individuals could interact within a shared mythology of their own devising. And as such it mirrored the larger network of mail art from which Neoism had sprung. The most important contribution of mail art has not been in the products which have been created, but the structure of interaction which has evolved. As such, the mail art show is a perfect expression of the collective personality of the medium at any one time. A barrage of color, design and information, it conveys a collective and interactive approach to art.

Another manifestation of the collective approach to a shared or "open concept" is Art Strike, 1990-1993. Originally put forward by Stewart Home of London, England, in 1985 as a battering ram for class war against commody culture, the notion took on a life of it's own after Art Strike Action Committees were established in such diverse locations as San Francisco, Baltimore, Ireland, and Uruguay. Homes' earlier attempts at collective action included the conception of Smile magazine, a publication of multiple origins, and the organization of the Festivals of Plagiarism, which was based on an end to the importance of originality as a component of the creative process. All of these concepts have roots in mail art and Neoism and expouse a desire to share the responsibility for creation. With the widepread reaction to the concept of Art Strike, 1990-1993, it is clear that mail art still has the ability to act as a purveyor of ideas. The fact that ideas can move swiftly through an international network and engage artists from England to Japan to the Soviet Union remains one of the mediums' greatest strengths.

New York Correspondance School meetings are now conducted on an international level. As the decade of the nineties begins, exciting projects are taking place that draw from both postal art history and the relationships formed during the Mail Art Congresses of the late eighties. Net Run, a collaboration between Japanese mail artist Shozo Shimamoto and Ryosuke Cohen and American Indian peace activist Dennis Banks, involved mail artists in England, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Finland and the Soviet Union, as the group traversed the European continent in a run for world peace during the Summer of 1990. Along the way, the Japanese artists collaborated with Western and Eastern European correspondents in performances and receptions for mail art shows.

The entrance of mail art into the Soviet Union has been a milestone in recent mail art history. Active Soviet participant Serge Segay has written an article on the medium that was published in Istuvvso, the official art journal of the Soviet Ministry of Culture and the largest art magazine in the country. Numerous Soviet mail art shows have been held. West German artist Peter K1/2stermann traveled to the Soviet Union in the Summer of 1990 to meet his mail art correspondent Jonas Nekrasius for a Mail Art Congress in Lithuania. And in September 1990, I traveled to Estonia to participate in the Mail Art Symposium in the USSR sponsored by mail artist Ilmar Kruusamae and the Tartu Artists Society.

Issues such as the impact of computer and FAX technologies on mail art activities in the nineties mark the entry of mail art into its' fifth decade. Other current concerns of the medium include it's increasing acceptance by the mainstream. But I think it has become clear that mail art functions best as an alternative standing in opposition to art as a commercial enterprise. In contrast to commodity culture, mail art is an ongoing process of questioning; a search for international understanding among artists. Mail artists are paving the way for the global interaction of various nationalities on a grassroots basis. Rather then the creation of one world culture, mail art is showing that a respect for divergent ideas can be a powerful stratagem in reconciling multi-national differences, and that specific cultures can interact in "open situations" where each cultural representation can make important contributions in an integrated process of creation.

Five decades after Ray Johnson developed his moticos mailing list, mail art has escaped the rigid boundaries of the artworld, and yet it still has lessons to impart to the mainstream art establishment. It confirms the idea that art is everywhere and that everyone can be creative given the opportunity to do so; that art is decentralized and does not depend on mandated opinions emanating from centralized world centers. Indeed, that the diffusion of ideas is more potent and varied when it originates from the base of a pyramid rather then the summit.

©  John Held Jr., U.S.A..

Further reproduction without written consent of the author is prohibited.