Gerard Barbot mail art to John Held, 1988

Dublin Core

Title

Gerard Barbot mail art to John Held, 1988

Subject

Mail art

Description

This piece of correspondence art, created in 1988 by Gerard Barbot, combines a rainbow gradient with a dull brown reminiscent of very old newspapers. Placed onto a stark black background, the overall effect is neat and orderly in color, the clippings and pieces themselves seemingly carefully placed so as to be fully visible with an almost scrapbook-level attention to detail. The statement “Mail art is just a big back and forth without bombs” is repeated several times throughout the work.

The association of the word “bombs” on a piece of mail (as in letter bombs) and in conjunction with mentions Hiroshima is  not coincidental. Additionally, the newspaper headline “Be Prepared…” could be a warning. Though Barbot’s actual statement and political intention are undefined, his instruction to “send ideas and images for performances” could be interpreted as a call to action, and the phrase “a big back and forth” seems to reference the ever-expanding social network of the New York Correspondance School.

Barbot himself, son of the French painter Fernand Barbot, was born in Paris and now makes found-object assemblage in Brooklyn. This work is more carefully designed and less based on the intimate interpersonal connections of which Ray Johnson and the NYCS was so fond. Perhaps Barbot’s reference to John Held’s Annotated Bibliography of Mail Art comments on the core ideas of the movement, such as its aversion to overt politics and its collage aesthetic, or perhaps Barbot was simply inspired by the recontextualization of clippings and ephemera.

Creator

Gerard Barbot

Source

Smithsonian Archives of American Art
John Held papers relating to Mail Art, 1973-2013

Publisher

[no text]

Date

1988

Contributor

Isabelle Martin

Rights

Ray Johnson Estate, New York.

Relation

[no text]

Format

Various media, 12.3 x 16.7 cm

Language

English

Type

Mail art

Identifier

[no text]

Coverage

[no text]

Files

AAA_heldjohn_62345.jpg
AAA_heldjohn_62346.jpg

Collection

Citation

Gerard Barbot, “Gerard Barbot mail art to John Held, 1988,” Collaborative Correspondence: Mail Art from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, accessed March 28, 2024, https://collaborativecorrespondence.omeka.net/items/show/3.

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