“Leonhard Frank Duch Mail Art to John Held”
Dublin Core
Title
“Leonhard Frank Duch Mail Art to John Held”
Subject
Mail Art
Description
Leonhard Frank Duch, who currently works and resides in Berlin, has been involved in mail art since 1975. A primary aim of mail art is to dissociate itself from institutions. Many artists value openness, allowing participants to contribute freely in their own time, form and fashion. Ray Johnson, leader of the New York Correspondance School, promoted the intimacy of handwritten notes and personal exchanges as a public display, the meaning of which was frequently open to the recipient’s interpretation. The practice involved little more than placing a stamp and sending it off in the mail, often in such a way that the connection between sender and recipient was uncertain; the intention, however, seemed to be to express the vulnerability of the sender and the reaction of the receiver. Mail art may not reach any purpose beyond connecting, but the art always provides space for participation.
This work displays a main object of mail art: a loose array of characteristics of the sender. By stamping phrases such as “duchthings,” “duch post,” and “I am duch, not Duchamp,” Duch uses his humorous voice to reveal fragments of himself by emphasizing his singularity. This comparison of himself to artist Marcel Duchamp projects a sense of the average onto Duch and obscures the potential brilliance of what lies within the envelope.
Mail, of which communication is the main objective, has now been given the opportunity to be subjective and elusive. On the front of the envelope, Duch has stamped the portrait of a man that could very well be the artist himself, and above is the phrase “I’m an artist” and superimposed above it: “unemployed,” in an interesting interplay between the role of the artist as an identity and as an occupation. The firefly imagery of the envelope also suggests a hint of whimsy. The juxtaposition of images and words, combined with the high degree of mystery in a small amount of content, makes the work intriguing and ambiguous, two common characteristics of mail art. Duch does the work of identifying himself personally, and allows the recipient—and us—to interpret this freely.
This work displays a main object of mail art: a loose array of characteristics of the sender. By stamping phrases such as “duchthings,” “duch post,” and “I am duch, not Duchamp,” Duch uses his humorous voice to reveal fragments of himself by emphasizing his singularity. This comparison of himself to artist Marcel Duchamp projects a sense of the average onto Duch and obscures the potential brilliance of what lies within the envelope.
Mail, of which communication is the main objective, has now been given the opportunity to be subjective and elusive. On the front of the envelope, Duch has stamped the portrait of a man that could very well be the artist himself, and above is the phrase “I’m an artist” and superimposed above it: “unemployed,” in an interesting interplay between the role of the artist as an identity and as an occupation. The firefly imagery of the envelope also suggests a hint of whimsy. The juxtaposition of images and words, combined with the high degree of mystery in a small amount of content, makes the work intriguing and ambiguous, two common characteristics of mail art. Duch does the work of identifying himself personally, and allows the recipient—and us—to interpret this freely.
Creator
Leonhard Frank Duch
Source
https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/items/detail/leonhard-frank-duch-mail-art-to-john-held-jr-18534
Publisher
Archives of American Art
Date
1981
Contributor
Elizabeth Moore
Rights
Artists Right Society
Relation
[no text]
Format
[no text]
Language
English
Type
Mail Art
Identifier
[no text]
Coverage
[no text]
Files
Collection
Citation
Leonhard Frank Duch, ““Leonhard Frank Duch Mail Art to John Held”,” Collaborative Correspondence: Mail Art from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, accessed April 28, 2024, https://collaborativecorrespondence.omeka.net/items/show/2.