In 1988, New-York based collage-artist Bob Warner saw a piece of mail art by Ray Johnson, liked what he saw, introduced himself and began a friendship that lasted until Johnson's death.
Warner received hundreds of pieces of mail, collages, objects and once, a piece of driftwood. They met seldom, rarely spoke except by telephone so all this was conducted via US mail, an organization for which Johnson had the highest respect.
At one of their rare personal meetings (they only met in person seven times), Johnson gave Warner thirteen cardboard boxes, tied with string and labeled "Bob Box One, "Bob Box Two," and so on. The boxes were packed with letters, drawings, photocopies and found objects - the stuff of Johnson's art.
The "Bob Boxes Tables of Content," at the Berkeley Art Museum, displays all thirteen of these boxes and their contents for the first time on the West Coast,
Warner has described the "contents as a window into the world of Ray Johnson in the 70's and 80's; everything from signed-and-dated empty toilet paper tubes, tea bags, broken fragments to a box that contained nothing but hundred of envelopes that were addressed by never mailed.
So, who was Ray Johnson? He called himself "the most famous unknown artist in America." But he was the founder of Pop Art, probably the first Pop artist. According to Henry Geldzahler, "Ray's collages, 'Elvis Presley No, 1' and 'James Dean' stand as the Plymouth Rock of the Pop movement (Geldzahler, Henry in Pop Art: 1955-1970 catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1986. Quoted in Wikipedia.)
He pioneered the use of "found images" and was among the first to use mechanical reproduction, hand created typographic alphabets and Xeroxes. He created the first happening, founded the mail art movement, which is still around, pioneered using "found objects" in art.
He gave new meaning to working "outside the box."
The art presented is obscure, and surrealist beyond Surrealism, hermetic, a body of work that is self-reflective and so interior and personal as to make little sense to an outsider. But it ropes you in (even if the objects on the center tables smell a little musty).
Warner likes to image Johnson's method as a three sided (or even a multi-person) game in which a person hits the ball to their neighbor so that the ball goes around and around, instead of back and forth. Each time, the ball (i.e. mail art, letters, rubber stamped collages, found art, etc) would accumulate more items, more instructions, more people roped into Johnson's game playing.
The typographical pieces on the wall, in Johnson's intentionally childlike lettering, are quirky with a deliberate use of verbal with visual puns. His letters are full of non-sequitur sentences, rubber stamp images, Xeroxes of the famous and the not-so-famous. One of the pieces proclaims "Dear Bob. Yesterday I peed your name in a blue bottle." Another is an altered image of the French poet Rimbaud, covered with bunny images made from rubber stamps.
Johnson was born in Detroit in 1927 and started out as an abstract artist, studying with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the late 1940's. He moved to New York City in 1949, following other Black Mountain alumni such as Cage and Cunningham. Within a few years, he was part of one of the most influential art circles in America, painting geometric abstractions that reflected the influence of Albers.
But by 1953, he began to make collages, which became the precursors of pop art, incorporating cigarette logos, images from fan magazines, iconic photos of famous actors like James Dean. Images of Elvis show up a lot. He coined a phrase for them - "moticos" - and carried them around New York, showing them to strangers in public places and asking for their reactions and recording them (most of this work has been destroyed or recycled).
Then, he began mailing collages to friends and strangers, arranging the first informal happenings. He met and made friends with Andy Warhol, participated in performance art events (1957-1963), staging events, which he called "Nothings."
His first known piece of mail directing a recipient to "please send to..." dates from 1958. The mail art became more systematic with the foundation of the "New York Correspondence School," using the US mail for his wittily typed and hand lettered cryptic texts and drawings.
A series of catastrophic events in 1968 (Andy Warhol being shot by Valerie Solanas, followed by Johnson being mugged, then two days later Robert Kennedy was shot) led Johnson to leave NY and live in increasing seclusion. On January 13, 1995, Johnson committed suicide by diving off a bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island.
I recommend following Johnson down his rabbit hole. Once you get into his art, it's very hard to leave. Is it rational, possible to peg, classify, explain? Not really.
None of it is logical but one suspects that, like Duchamp whom he admired, he didn't care if his work lent itself to rational explanation.
Berkeley Art Museum, through May 20, 2012
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/241
(The San Francisco Public Library has a catalogue of one of his exhibits. It's under lock and key and you have to go through two sets of gatekeepers to look at it. But it's an even more complete view of his his complex and obsessive art. Plus, you get to sit down).
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