Community at a distance: Ray Johnson's correspondence art network, 1955-75

During the 1960s, as the US Post Office underwent a radical restructuring, the artist Ray Johnson (1927-1995) initiated a new mode of artistic practice that would come to be called “correspondence art” or “mail art.” Utilizing the postal system as an alternative site for the distribution of art, Johnson sent recipients a letter or object in the post, asked them to add to or subtract from that item, and then mail it onward to another participant or back to Johnson. Through this process, Johnson and his collaborators built a network of correspondence artists that challenged conventional modes of artistic production, distribution, and reception. My dissertation analyzes this form of artistic production as well as the model of community Johnson engendered through its development and utilization. Reading correspondence art through the lenses of postal history, network studies, and theories of gender and sexuality, I argue that the collectively produced assemblages circulated by Johnson and his collaborators revealed a correlation between the purification, automation, and privatization of the US Post during the 1960s and the desire to segregate and censor certain populations (e.g. an increasingly visible gay community) from other segments of the American public. On the other hand, I suggest that Johnson’s project, which depends on an interpersonal network of collaborators (composed of friends and strangers alike), speaks to a decentralized understanding of subjectivity as it emerged in the latter half of the 20th century. It is around this model of subjectivity that Johnson formulated, what I call, a community at a distance.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Kienle, Miriam

Contributors dc:contributor

• Weissman, Terri
• Hamilton, Kevin
• Higgins, Hannah
• Greenhill, Jennifer

• Ray Johnson
• New York Correspondance School
• network society
• neo-avant-garde
• mail art
• correspondence art
• postal art
• interpersonal communication
• Cold War America

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2014 Miriam E. Kienle

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/73071

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/73071