Browse Items (11 total)

Ray Johnson, an important mail artist who founded the New York Correspondance School, used the bunny rabbit as a key symbol of the school and it’s participants starting in the mid 1960s. He never omitted the possibility of depicting a message through…

Elizabeth Pearl Was–Nasaw, also known as Lyx Ish, sent this envelope to John Held to illustrate that art is not equal to money. Elizabeth Was–Nasaw was a musician, poet and the co-founder of Xexoxial Endarchy. X.E. is a non-profit artist-run…

Southwest USA Decentralized Mail Art Congress_ Dallas features ten stamps by an anonymous artist that are put together to create one piece of mail art. Mail art centers around the idea of escaping the gallery and museum art scene where artists are…

Lucy Lippard stated that she was “roped into” mail art in the late 1960s when Johnson sent out a mandate for NYCS members to “Send Slips to Lucy Lippard.” Johnson sent her several mail art items during their correspondence, including Mail art to Lucy…

Andre congratulates Held on his collection of mail art, though Andre specifies that he does not consider himself a mail artist. Front of postcard features a cartoon signed "Willy Smacks" which depicts policemen at the Tate Gallery following the theft…

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…

John C. “Jack” Palmer, aka Rudi Rubberoid, was a mail artist who became involved with the international mail art community in the early 1980’s. Palmer owned and operated a postcard and stationary store in Bellingham, Washington called Postcard…

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…

Official Art? is a brochure created by Russian artist Serge Segay (1947-2014) specifically for the first mail art exhibition in the USSR which took place in Yeysk in 1989. The brochure served as an exhibition advertising. The visual aesthetic and a…

In a movement as broad and amorphous as the practice of mail art, finding and agreeing upon a set of themes is no easy task. Of the seemingly countless artifacts that make up the John Held mail art collection, this work offers us a surprisingly…