5/16/14

Ray Johnson - considered the progenitor of Correspondence art, blurred the boundaries between life and art, authorship and intimacy. The defining nature of his work were his letters (often both visual and textual in character), intended to be received, replied to (altered and embellished) and read, again and again

Not Nothing: Selected Writings by Ray Johnson, 1954-1994, ed. by Elizabeth Zuba. Siglio, 2014.

Ray Johnson, considered the progenitor of Correspondence art, blurred the boundaries between life and art, authorship and intimacy. The defining nature of his work were his letters (often both visual and textual in character), intended to be received, replied to (altered and embellished) and read, again and again. This lovingly curated collection of more than 200 mostly previously unpublished writings—including selected letters, minutes for “New York Correspondence School” meetings, hand-written notes and other writings—opens a new view into the whirling flux of Johnson’s art, highlighting his keen sense of play as well as his attuned sensitivity to both language and the shifting nature of meaning. Cumulatively, the writings reveal not only how he created relationships, glyphs and puzzles by connecting words, phrases, people and ideas, but also something about the elusive Johnson himself.
Not Nothing: Selected Writings by Ray Johnson is but one possible selection from thousands of pieces from the Ray Johnson Estate archives. In this chronological presentation, Editor Elizabeth Zuba’s intention is to make space for thoroughly experiencing a pervasive and often overlooked aspect of Johnson’s work: language. With near full-size reproductions of the original pages in color and half-tones, the works in Not Nothing: Selected Writings by Ray Johnson can be easily read—and are revelatory in their diverse but porous modes and in the way they deepen the understanding of Johnson’s entire oeuvre.

Make room for Ray Johnson, whose place in history has been only vaguely defined. Johnson’s beguiling, challenging art has an exquisite clarity and emotional intensity that makes it much more than simply a remarkable mirror of its time, although it is that, too. - Roberta Smith, The New York Times

EXCERPTS
Introduction by Elizabeth Zuba
Essay by Kevin Killian

Ray Johnson, The Paper Snake. Siglio, 2014.

www.rayjohnsonestate.com/

The Paper Snake is copyrighted, I don’t know why—that seems excessive caution.

—from an unattributed 1965 review found in the Ray Johnson Estate archives

Long out of print (and coveted by Ray Johnson fans), The Paper Snake is an essential work in Johnson’s oeuvre and the second title published by Dick Higgins’s extraordinary Something Else Press in 1965. A vertiginous, mind-bending artist’s book, The Paper Snake was far ahead of its time in its subversive and exuberant confluence of art and life. Assembled and designed by Higgins from his amassed collection of Johnson’s letters, tid-bits and artworks (said Johnson: “all my writings, rubbings, plays, things that I had 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”*), The Paper Snake connects disparate elements to unbed fixed relationships and forge new systems of meaning by means of scissors, paste and the American postal system.
An introductory essay by Frances F. L. Beatty, Director of the Ray Johnson Estate, is included as a separate insert, and in the spirit of the original, the print run is the same (1840 copies). This reprint is four-color offset, a different method than the original in which Higgins used a two-color process with innovative ink combinations.

The first principle of Ray Johnson’s art is that anything isolated is beautiful, albeit opaque. The second principle is that meaning awakens in that isolated beautiful thing when it is juxtaposed to something like it (counterparts, like rhymes, for the romantic; counterpoints, like puns, for the ironic). Ray Johnson said, “I deal in invisibilities and anonymities.” He said, “Andy Warhol says my snakes aren’t snakes—they’re worms because they aren’t lifesize. But some of my snakes are imaginary and inarticulate snakes, and what is lifesize about inarticulateness?” To Dick Higgins he has written, “I want to live and die like an egg.” Ray Johnson’s art is always see and say, show and tell; it is also imaginary, inarticulate, and eggshaped.—William S. Wilson, from his introduction to The Paper Snake

this is not a bk of poems to be “read” & then yell “GREAT! GREAT!” this is not a bk of poems. this is not a bk. GREAT! GREAT! the best thing to do i’ve found, to approach this “bk” is by picking it up only when you feel like it, say hello, or whatever you say to a friend & then pick out a pg that is appetizing to all of yr senses. eventually every pg will magnetize you. there is nothing in here which won’t be chewed on & researched by all mental cells, but NONE OF IT will be “read” the way we are accustomed to reading anything. it will be “read” the way a scrap bk is thumbed thru or a dream is recollected, piece by piece; for this is nothing more than a man forming a few thoughts & occurrences into a collection via postcards, photographs, check stubs, torn pieces of cloth. whatever is attracted to him becomes him & he, in return, offers it to us along w/words designed not to “say” anything but to recreate these material attachments & incidents for us to behold. GREAT! GREAT! —from Ole Issue 2, March 1965, publisher: Douglas Blazek*

A reviewer ought to read a book when he reviews it, so I read The Paper Snake. He ought to mention the subject and give you a notion of the author’s competence in dealing with said subject. Reader, dear, here I have let you down.
I tried to find out what the subject of The Paper Snake is, but I’m still mystified. Somewhere along the line I missed the point or lost the thread of the argument and was unable to retrieve it.
It’s supposed to be no fair peeking at the dust-jacket blurb, but this time I peeked. The blurb is by William Wilson (not the same as my friend Edmund Wilson), who is a master of arts and a doctor of philosophy, and it runs to 600 words—not as long as The Paper Snake proper. Mr. Wilson doesn’t say what Mr. Johnson is talking about. He himself seems a competent writer, and he is fairly successful in putting a good face upon the situation in which he is confronted.
Mr. Wilson says, among other things, “The meaning in Ray Johnson’s work is not logical. . .” I shall not contest that judgement.
The Paper Snake is copyrighted, I don’t know why—that seems excessive caution.
The book is priced at $3.47. Again I wonder why. —M.B., Source unknown, found in the archives of the Ray Johnson Estate

*Issue number of Ole unconfirmed!
“Review” by Ray Johnson, 1964 copyright the Ray Johnson Estate, courtesy of Richard L. Feigen & Co. All rights reserved. Published in Not Nothing: Selected Writings by Ray Johnson, 1954-1994, edited by Elizabeth Zuba (Siglio, 2014)

A Serpentine Assortment: Ray Johnson and Snakes

Videos Of And About Ray Johnson

Excerpt: The Ray Johnson Videos Sampler

The Ray Johnson Videos Trailer

Ray Johnson Audio: High School Photo

Ray Johnson Audio: Dead Pan Club

Ray Johnson Audio: Except Me

Ray Johnson Audio: Ink Runs

Ray Johnson Audio: Interesting in Three Quarters

Ray Johnson Audio: Right Against the Glass

A Conversation with Ray Johnson

France F.L. Beatty, Ph.D., discusses the Memorial Exhibition

About Ray Johnson

Almost twenty years after his death, Ray Johnson (1927-1995) continues to be revealed as one of the most quietly consequential figures in American contemporary art. An influential pioneer of Pop art, Conceptual art and Mail art (though he eschewed all of these monikers), Johnson’s extrasensory perception and insatiable curiosity resulted in an immense body of work that spans collage, correspondence, performance, sculpture, drawing, painting and book arts. Johnson’s work operates in a space of void, fragmentation and dispersion; from his early geometric abstract paintings to the collage and text work he called “moticos”; from the dancing black glyphs and morphing animal signatures to the later dense silhouette collages; from his writings, artist’s books and correspondence art to the (non-) performances he called “Nothings.” Fully charged with negative capability, Johnson’s work in “nothingness” hinged on communication and relationships. His circle of friends, including Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, George Brecht, John Cage, Christo, Chuck Close, Joseph Cornell, Albert M. Fine, Dick Higgins, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Richard Lippold, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol, among others, reads like a Who’s Who of 1950s-70’s American art. Despite sharing major exhibitions between 1957-1978 (with the likes of Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Allan Kaprow and Andy Warhol, among others) as well as having important solo shows at major galleries and museums (such as at The Whitney in 1970), Johnson systematically refused or flouted most opportunities to popularize his work through mainstream art commerce. On January 13, 1995 Johnson leapt from the Sag Harbor bridge in Long Island in an apparent suicide.