Ray Johnson

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Ray Edward Johnson (born October 16, 1927 in Detroit , † January 13, 1995 in New York City ) was an American artist. He is considered the founder of Mail Art .

Life and work

Ray Johnson grew up as a child of Finnish immigrants in a working-class Detroit neighborhood and received his basic, classical art education as a teenager at Cass Technical High School . He then attended Black Mountain College in Asheville , North Carolina, whose board included personalities such as Albert Einstein and the writer William Carlos Williams and where celebrities such as the painter Willem de Kooning and the composer John Cage taught.

After completing his studies, Ray Johnson moved to New York City in 1948 , where his name soon became well known in the art scene. He began doing hundreds of small pieces of work in which he repurposed traditional methods of abstraction and, in particular, based on the Dadaist collage . He himself referred to these constructions, for which he mainly used ink drawings, cut-outs and random elements, as "Moticos".

“I've got a big pile of things at home which will make moticos. They're really collages - paste-ups of pictures and pieces of paper, and so on - but that sounds too much like what they really are, so I call them moticos. It's a good word because it's both singular and plural and you can pronounce it how you like. However I'm going to get a new word soon. "

“I have a large pile of things at home that will make Moticos. These are actually collages - glued pictures and pieces of paper etc - but that sounds too much like what they really are, that's why I refer to them as "moticos". This is a good word because it is singular and plural at the same time, and you can pronounce it however you want. Nevertheless, I will soon find a new word for it. "

- Ray Johnson

Johnson disliked the established institutions of the art world and frequently disregarded the conditions imposed by the galleries when presenting his work in public . In search of a more accessible form of art distribution, he discovered Mail Art , ie the mailing of his work, and founded the New York Correspondance School (NYCS) in the early 1960s . The only gallery owner Johnson continued to work closely with was Richard L. Feigen .

After a brutal assault and after Valerie Solanas ' attempted murder of Andy Warhol , Johnson left New York City and retired to a small town in upstate New York , where he continued his work in great seclusion. On January 13, 1995, his body was found in a small bay in Sag Harbor , Long Island . The circumstances of his death are unclear. The Whitney Museum in New York set up a posthumous retrospective for him in 1999.

To this day, Ray Johnson's work is largely unknown to a larger audience, but within the contemporary art scene he was a legendary outsider.

Documentary about Ray Johnson

  • How to Draw a Bunny (USA 2002; Director: John W. Walter)

Exhibitions

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kito Nedo, Behind Pop ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , art-magazin.de, January 2, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.art-magazin.de
personal data
SURNAME Johnson, Ray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johnson, Ray Edward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American artist
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1995
Place of death New York City