Some answers to frequently asked questions about mail art
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Correspondence art (Mail art)
Term applied to art sent through the post rather than displayed or sold through conventional commercial channels, encompassing a variety of media including postcards, books, images made on photocopying machines or with rubber stamps, postage stamps designed by artists, concrete poetry and other art forms generally considered marginal.
John Held Jr. The Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner, Macmillan Publishers Limited 1996
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You can become a mail artist by sending a piece of your own creativity through the snail mail to some of the names and addresses you find through links on this site or find addresses of current mail art invitations by searching for mail art exhibitions using an Internet search engine.
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According to Doris Bell in Contemporary Art Trends 1960-1980, "mail art, began by Marcel Duchamp in 1916 when he sent his ideas by postcard, has grown into a worldwide network...The mailing of ephemeral material to freinds, begun by Ray Johnson in the 1950's, mushroomed into a kind of dadaist pen-pal club that circumvents the gallery system and so is an alternative to accepted ideas of art."
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Bell states that "mail art helps overcome the artist's isolation, and the field of action is a continuous circle, repeatedly transfromed, with nothing final. A small universe, it incorporates interpersonal cooperation and eliminates official selection, hierarchical attitudes, and evaluation of an artist's work."
Do the descriptions of mail art seem similar or different to your experiences on the Internet? If you would like to help us research the relevance of the Mail Art Network to the Internet please participate in honoria's Interactive Research.
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