Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Ray Johnson
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==New York years== Johnson moved with Richard Lippold to New York City by early 1949,<ref name="artpool" /> rejoining Cage and Cunningham and befriending, within the next couple of years, [[Robert Rauschenberg]], [[Jasper Johns]], [[Cy Twombly]], [[Ad Reinhardt]], [[Stan Vanderbeek]], [[Norman Solomon]], [[Lucy Lippard]], [[Sonia Sekula]], [[Carolyn Brown (choreographer)|Carolyn Brown]] and [[Earle Brown]], [[Judith Malina]], [[Diane di Prima]], [[Julian Beck]], [[Remy Charlip]], [[James Waring]], and innumerable others. With the [[American Abstract Artists]] group, Johnson painted geometric abstractions that, in part, reflected the influence of Albers.<ref name="artpool" /> But by 1953 he turned to collage and left the American Abstract Artists, rejecting his early paintings, which it is rumored that he later burned in Cy Twombly's fireplace. Johnson began to create small, irregularly shaped works incorporating fragments from popular culture, most notably the Lucky Strikes logo and images from fan magazines of such movie stars as [[Elvis Presley]], [[James Dean]], [[Marilyn Monroe]], and [[Shirley Temple]].<ref name="nytimes" /><ref name="1stdigital" /> In the summer of 1955, he coined a term for these small collages: "moticos".<ref name="artpool" /><ref name="1stdigital" /> He carried boxes of moticos around New York, showing them on sidewalks, at cafes, in Grand Central Station and other public places; he asked passersby what they thought of them, and recorded some of their responses. He began mailing collages to friends and strangers, along with a series of manifestos, mimeographed for distribution, including "What is a Moticos?", excerpts of which were published in an article by [[John Wilcock]] in the inaugural issue of ''[[The Village Voice]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Ray Johnson - Moticos - Village Voice |url=https://warholstars.org/ray-johnson-moticos.html |access-date=2024-04-25 |website=warholstars.org}}</ref> A friend of Johnson's, art critic [[Suzi Gablik]], brought photographer [[Elisabeth Novick]] to document an installation of dozens of Johnson's moticos in autumn of 1955. (Most of these were destroyed or recycled by the artist.) "The random arrangement, on a dilapidated cellar door in Lower Manhattan may even have been the first informal Happening," she recalled later.<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://archive.org/details/popartusukconnec0000unse |title=Pop art : U.S./U.K. connections, 1956-1966 |date=2001 |location=Houston, Tex. |publisher=Menil Collection in association with Hatje Cantz Publishers |isbn=978-0-939594-51-1}}</ref> According to [[Henry Geldzahler]], "[Ray's] collages ''Elvis Presley No. 1'' and ''James Dean'' stand as the Plymouth Rock of the Pop movement."<ref>[[Henry Geldzahler|Geldzahler, Henry]] in ''Pop Art: 1955β1970'' catalogue, [[Art Gallery of New South Wales]], Sydney, 1985</ref> Johnson's friend [[Lucy Lippard]] would later write that "The Elvis ... and Marilyn Monroe [collages], heralded Warholian Pop."<ref>Lippard, Lucy in Correspondences catalogue, Wexner Center/Whitney Museum, 2000</ref> Johnson was quickly recognized as part of the nascent Pop generation. A note about the cover image in January 1958's ''Art News'' pointed out that "[Jasper] Johns' first one-man show ... places him with such better-known colleagues as Rauschenberg, Twombly, Kaprow and Ray Johnson".<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://archive.org/details/sim_artnews_1958-01_56_9 |title=Art News 1958-01: Vol 56 Iss 9 |date=January 1958 |publisher=Brant Publications Incorporated |language=English}}</ref> Johnson worked part-time at the [[Orientalia Bookstore]] in the [[Lower East Side]] as he began to deepen his understanding of Zen philosophy and to employ "chance" in his work. Both of these interests increasingly informed his collages, performances, and mail art. Johnson also found occasional work as a graphic designer. He had met [[Andy Warhol]] by 1956; both designed several book covers for [[New Directions Publishing|New Directions]] and other publishers. Johnson had a series of whimsical flyers advertising his design services printed via offset lithography, and began mailing these out. These were joined in 1956β7 by two small promotional artists' books, {{Not a typo|''BOO/K/OF/THE/MO/NTH''}} and {{Not a typo|''P/EEK/A/BOO/K/OFTHE/WEE/K''}}, self-published in editions of 500. Johnson participated in about a dozen performance art events between 1957 and 1963 β in his own short pieces (''Funeral Music for Elvis Presley'' and ''Lecture on Modern Music''), in those of others (by [[James Waring]] and [[Susan Kaufman]]), and via his own compositions performed by his colleagues at [[The Living Theatre]] and during the Fluxus Yam Festival of 1963. From 1961 on, Johnson periodically staged events he called "Nothings", described to his friend William Wilson as "an attitude as opposed to a happening", which would parallel the "Happenings" of [[Allan Kaprow]] and later Fluxus events. The first of these, "Nothing by Ray Johnson", was part of a weekly series of events in July 1961 at the [[AG Gallery]], a venue in New York operated by [[George Maciunas]] and [[Almus Salcius]]; [[Yoko Ono]]'s first solo show was on view in the gallery at the time. [[Ed Plunkett]] later recalled entering an empty room. "Visitors began to enter the premises. Most of them looked quite dismayed that nothing was going on ... Well, finally Ray arrived ... and he brought with him a large corrugated cardboard box of wooden spools. Soon after arriving Ray emptied this box of spools down the staircase ... with these ... one had to step cautiously to avoid slipping ... I was delighted with this gesture."<ref>Plunkett, Ed. unpublished typescript</ref>{{better source needed|date=February 2020}} Johnson's Second Nothing took place at [[Playwrights Horizons|Maidman Playhouse]], New York, in 1962. It was part of a variety show that was organized by [[Nicholas Cernovich]] and [[Alan Marlow]] of [[New York Poet's Theatre]], had lighting design by [[Billy Name]] (aka [[Billy Linich]]), and featured artists such as [[Fred Herko]], [[George Brecht]], [[Simone Morris]], [[La Monte Young]], [[Stan Vanderbeek]], and others.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Journal |date=2011-05-15 |title=To Ray J, George Brecht Knows, George Brecht's Nose by Julie J. Thomson |url=https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/volume2/julie-j-thomson-2/ |access-date=2024-04-26 |website=Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center |language=en}}</ref> In 1964/65, Ray Johnson circulated publicity for an imaginary gallery called the Robin Gallery, which was a pun on the [[Rueben Gallery]] where some of the earliest happenings took place and was said by one critic to βput the happenings out on the street in a series of irresponsible exploits and escapades."<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Village Voice |date=1965-04-08 |via=Google News |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=KEtq3P1Vf8oC&dat=19650408&printsec=frontpage&hl=en |access-date=2024-04-26}}</ref> Johnson's first known piece of mail directing a recipient to "please send to..." someone else dates from 1958; the phrases "please add to and return", "please add and send to", and even "please do not send to" followed. Johnson's mail art activities became more systematic with the help of several friends, particularly Bill Wilson and his mother, assemblage artist [[May Wilson]], along with [[Marie Tavroges Stilkind]] and later [[Toby Spiselman]]. In 1962, Ed Plunkett named Johnson's endeavors 'the New York Correspondence School' (NYCS). In early 1962, [[Joseph Byrd]] responded to several mailings with a red rubber stamp, "THIS IS NOT ART," which Johnson then used in his mailings for several months. On April 1, 1968, the first of the meeting of the NYCS was held at the [[Society of Friends]] Meeting House on [[Rutherford Place]] in New York City. Two more meetings were called by Johnson in the following weeks, including the Seating-Meeting at New York's [[Finch College]], about which [[John Gruen]] reported: "It was ... attended by many artists and 'members' ... all of whom sat around wondering when the meeting would start. It never did ... people wrote things on bits of paper, on a blackboard, or simply talked. It was all strangely meaningless β and strangely meaningful."<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=puECAAAAMBAJ |title=New York Magazine |date=1968-06-24 |language=en}}</ref> Johnson staged such events regularly, often following them up with witty typed reports, photocopied for wide distribution via the post. Such gatherings continued to be held in various guises into the mid-1980s. Johnson produced 13 known unbound pages of his enigmatic ''A Book About Death'' from 1963 to 1965. Consisting of cryptic texts and drawings (mostly) by Johnson, they were mailed a few at a time, randomly, and offered for sale via a classified ad in ''[[The Village Voice]]''.,<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-12-18 |title=A Book About A Book About Death by Ray Johnson and William S. Wilson (digitized in full) |url=https://williamswilsonwritings.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/a-book-about-a-book-about-death-by-ray-johnson-and-william-s-wilson-digitized-in-full/ |access-date=2024-04-26 |website=William S. Wilson : Collected Writings |language=en}}</ref> thus very few people ever received all the pages. [[Something Else Press]] published Johnson's ''The Paper Snake'' for a wider audience in 1965. Remarking about himself and the book, Johnson said: <blockquote>I'm an artist and a, well, I shouldn't call myself a poet but other people have. What I do is classify the words as poetry. ... ''The Paper Snake'' ... is all my writings, rubbings, plays, things that I had given to the publisher, [[Dick Higgins]], editor and publisher, which I mailed to him or brought to him in cardboard boxes or shoved under his door, or left in his sink, or whatever, over a period of years. He saved all these things, designed and published a book, and I simply as an artist did what I did without classification. So when the book appeared the book stated, "Ray Johnson is a poet", but I never said, "this is a poem", I simply wrote what I wrote and it later became classified.<ref>Johnson, Ray with Diane Spodarek and Randy Delbeke. [http://www.jpallas.com/hh/rj/DAMintervw-RayJ.html "Ray Johnson interview"], ''Detroit Artists Monthly'', February 1968, via jpallas.com</ref></blockquote> Long out of print, ''The Paper Snake'' was re-printed by [[Siglio Press]] in 2014.<ref>[http://sigliopress.com/book/the-paper-snake/ ''The Paper Snake''] Siglio Press</ref> On June 3, 1968 β the same day that Andy Warhol was shot by [[Valerie Solanas]] with a gun she'd stored under May Wilson's bed β Johnson was mugged at knifepoint.<ref>Bloch, Mark. [http://www.panmodern.com/ray-abc/rayjohnson_abc_bloch.html "Leap of Faith"], ABCnews.com. 1999. via panmodern.com.</ref> Two days later, Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Severely shaken, Johnson moved to [[Glen Cove, New York|Glen Cove]], Long Island, and the next year bought a house in nearby Locust Valley, where [[Richard Lippold]] and his family resided. He began to live in a state of increasing reclusion in what he called a "small white farmhouse with a [[Joseph Cornell]] attic." Johnson appeared twice in the ''Art in Process'' series, described by blogger Greg Allen as "a series of topical, process-oriented, teaching exhibitions organized by Finch College Museum director [[Elayne Varian]]. They included sketches, models and studies to show how the artist did what he was doing."<ref>Allen, Greg, [https://greg.org/archive/2011/01/26/art-in-process-reading-finch-college-museum.html "Art In Process: Reading Finch College Museum"], January 26, 2011</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)