Mail Art is Disposable Art
Dublin Core
Title
Mail Art is Disposable Art
Subject
Mail Art
Description
Carol Schneck’s Mail Art is Disposable Art (c. 1988) is a standard-size black and white postcard collage in the John Held Papers at the Archives of American Art. A photocopied picture of New York’s iconic Whitney Museum is pictured protruding out of a hand-drawn garbage can, presumably having just been thrown away. The garbage can’s lid lies next to the bin, unable to fully contain all of the Whitney, and a piece of crumpled paper has fallen onto the ground beside it. Across the trash is written, “MAIL ART IS NOT MUSEUM ART”. The rest of the postcard is taken up with text slogans; “STOP Saving Garbage!” is collaged, a two piece ransom note, while “USE IT! ABUSE IT!” and ‘MAIL ART IS DISPOSABLE ART” are written in the artist’s hand.
Carol Schneck, an active mail art participant based in Lansing, Michigan, voices the key ideologies of the movement in her piece: As more stationary art practices have traditionally sought dissemination of ideas through the voice of the singular artist, mail art- particularly early mail art- was created to establish more democratic systems of communication. The elite capitalist hierarchies of the established galleries and museums, casting judgments both on the critical and the monetary value of art, are immediately eschewed by the mail art format. In mail art, ideas are circulated through direct complex interpersonal networks. The work demanding participation, collaboration, and physical handling- both by the participants within the network and by the postal system through which the mail is being processed.
The inclusion of the Whitney in Schneck’s piece is undoubtedly a direct and pointed reference to the first museum show of mail art in 1970, “Ray Johnson: New York Correspondence School”, curated by Marcia Tucker and the movement’s progenitor Ray Johnson, and held at the Whitney Museum. Although the exhibition featured contributions from 106 participants in the New York Correspondence School (the rather tongue in cheek name for Johnson’s network of collaborators and assorted mail art accomplices, ranging from highest echelons of the contemporary art world to friends and total strangers), the Whitney exhibition posed some serious questions about the nature and structure of the burgeoning movement as a whole. Firstly, should mail art be archived at all? Should the work be moved out of its network, and tacked to a wall? And to a wall, no less, in an institution that had been summarily rejected by the tenets of a movement that had readily fled from both definition and establishment? If correspondence and communication is the goal of the work, surely mail art is never to be personally kept or formalized, but always to be passed on, person to person, retaining its immediacy and circuitry.
Schneck’s postcard addresses this directly in Mail Art is Disposable Art: The physical pieces of mail art are by nature transitory, intimate, and implicitly social. They are permanently at risk for disruption and destruction, whether from the postal system or from a singular link in the chain of correspondence. Consequently, individual pieces of mail art, cannot be treated as precious, as “museum art”, as Schneck says. The network of communication is of value- the work is not.
Carol Schneck, an active mail art participant based in Lansing, Michigan, voices the key ideologies of the movement in her piece: As more stationary art practices have traditionally sought dissemination of ideas through the voice of the singular artist, mail art- particularly early mail art- was created to establish more democratic systems of communication. The elite capitalist hierarchies of the established galleries and museums, casting judgments both on the critical and the monetary value of art, are immediately eschewed by the mail art format. In mail art, ideas are circulated through direct complex interpersonal networks. The work demanding participation, collaboration, and physical handling- both by the participants within the network and by the postal system through which the mail is being processed.
The inclusion of the Whitney in Schneck’s piece is undoubtedly a direct and pointed reference to the first museum show of mail art in 1970, “Ray Johnson: New York Correspondence School”, curated by Marcia Tucker and the movement’s progenitor Ray Johnson, and held at the Whitney Museum. Although the exhibition featured contributions from 106 participants in the New York Correspondence School (the rather tongue in cheek name for Johnson’s network of collaborators and assorted mail art accomplices, ranging from highest echelons of the contemporary art world to friends and total strangers), the Whitney exhibition posed some serious questions about the nature and structure of the burgeoning movement as a whole. Firstly, should mail art be archived at all? Should the work be moved out of its network, and tacked to a wall? And to a wall, no less, in an institution that had been summarily rejected by the tenets of a movement that had readily fled from both definition and establishment? If correspondence and communication is the goal of the work, surely mail art is never to be personally kept or formalized, but always to be passed on, person to person, retaining its immediacy and circuitry.
Schneck’s postcard addresses this directly in Mail Art is Disposable Art: The physical pieces of mail art are by nature transitory, intimate, and implicitly social. They are permanently at risk for disruption and destruction, whether from the postal system or from a singular link in the chain of correspondence. Consequently, individual pieces of mail art, cannot be treated as precious, as “museum art”, as Schneck says. The network of communication is of value- the work is not.
Creator
Carol Schneck
Source
https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/items/detail/carol-schneck-mail-art-to-john-held-jr-829
Publisher
Archives of American Art
Date
1988
Contributor
Lizz Hamilton
Rights
Current copyright status is undetermined
Relation
[no text]
Format
postcard, handwritten, illus., 16 x 11 cm
Language
English
Type
Mail Art
Identifier
[no text]
Coverage
[no text]
Files
Collection
Citation
Carol Schneck, “Mail Art is Disposable Art,” Collaborative Correspondence: Mail Art from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, accessed May 10, 2024, https://collaborativecorrespondence.omeka.net/items/show/7.