Recently, the Daily Arts section received an email requesting that we give a page of our production over to the silhouette that is now printed in conjunction with this article. The instructions were to “please add to and return to Ray Johnson” -- the artist ostensibly behind the work -- silhouettes with whatever modifications our readers made to their individual copies. We liked the idea readily enough as it allowed us the opportunity to be part of the art as well as to comment on it. The next step was to do some preliminary research and reach out to the artist for a comment.
But, as it turns out, Ray Johnson is deceased; in fact, the last time anyone saw him alive was over twenty years ago when he jumped off a bridge in Sag Harbor, N.Y. before proceeding to backstroke out to sea and, subsequently, wash up on shore the following day. Myriad rumors surround the circumstances of his death.
The art project included in this paper, then, is actually an homage to Johnson’s work, commemorating the 20th anniversary of his passing. To gain a better understanding of this tribute, one should know more about Johnson’s career.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Johnson grew up in Detroit, Mich., spending the first 17 years of his life in the then-vibrant city. In high school he participated in an advertising art program, perhaps a symptom or a cause of his later interest in collage. During his youth, Johnson also took classes at the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA), home to many classic works, especially of American artists, and a place proud of both the breadth of its collections as well as its deep connection with American artistry and culture.
Before moving to New York City in 1949, Johnson spent three years studying at Black Mountain College (BMC). The influence of his time at BMC was apparent in the works he produced upon his arrival in New York. He created largely geometric abstract paintings, reminiscent of the work of one of his professors at BMC and not at all what Johnson is known for today. Notably, Johnson destroyed multiple pieces of his early work before moving on to the medium for which he is best remembered: collage.
At this point, some may wonder why we have chosen to dedicate a feature-length article to the life and work of a collage artist. After all, collage is one of the first forms of art we learn in pre-school just after we have mastered finger painting. Collage is often perceived as relatively easy to do. Anyone with glue, some extra magazines, cloth, glitter or other paraphernalia can (technically) put one together.
It is this very simplicity that makes Johnson’s work so compelling.
Pop Art in the Post
The concept of mail art started with Johnson’s collage. The artist mailed out envelopes with letters, drawings or pieces of his own collages to friends, acquaintances and complete strangers with similar instructions to those accompanying the silhouette. These early ventures developed into a whole network of participants who would pass around a project within the network before returning it to Johnson, and the idea eventually became the founding concept of New York Correspondence School, an informal artists' collective founded by the collagist in the '50s. The current commemoration is also an attempt at growing that network and infusing it with new blood.
Collage is inherently chaotic, with its layering of often tangentially related media, and a form of art which seemed to suit Johnson. His collages brought together dichotomous objects like pop culture magazine excerpts and snakeskin. While there was no single goal to his work, a prominent theme seems to have been inclusivity. For instance, though meetings at the Correspondence School were usually informal gatherings with no agenda, members often just passed the time by creating art together. Thus, the mail art movement constituted art by committee, even art by democracy, and greatly enhanced the random nature of the works.
"New York's Most Famous Unknown Artist"
Johnson’s own collages were almost constantly in a state of transition. His works, which he called “moticos,” were small, irregularly shaped amalgamations of media. Johnson let the city shape his work, often taking boxes of his moticos around New York and displaying his them in public places such as Grand Central Terminal. Purportedly, the goal of these public displays was to engage passersby in the artistic process, if not actively through their participation then passively through their feedback. In fact, Johnson recorded some of the reactions to his work.
Yet, for all his correspondence and interaction with strangers, Johnson was rather reclusive; he chose to actively avoid fame’s spotlight despite the recognition and acclaim his works received. Tellingly, Grace Glueck wrote in the New York Times in 1965 that Johnson was “the most famous unknown artist” of the time. Johnson’s wariness of fame may have been a byproduct of the democratic nature of his works; he was just the conductor orchestrating a much larger performance than the one seen by critics and fans.
Though he went through destructive cycles when he was younger in which he burned his own work, the moticos maintained a sporadic presence in his portfolio. After many of the moticos were burned in the '50s, they resurfaced again around five years later when Johnson cut down his old collages into tiny pieces and affixed them to larger cuts of cardboard. These amalgamations were to become tiles that together formed even larger works. The new works placed an emphasis on geometric forms and minimalism.
The Later Years
Performance art, which Johnson first produced on his own in 1957, came to constitute a growing portion of Johnson’s repertoire. Whereas prior to 1957 he had participated in friends’ and contemporaries’ performance pieces, after this turning-point he began to stage his own. While other artists staged “happenings,” Johnson put on what he called “Nothings.” At the first of these events, titled “Nothing by Ray Johnson,” the artist emptied the contents of a box of wooden spools down the stairs so as to make traversing the steps an ordeal.
Toward the end of the 1960s, Johnson began to close himself off from mainstream society and tucked himself away in a house on Long Island. While extricated from the world, Johnson continued his mail art correspondence. In 1973, he wrote an obituary for the “New York Times” proclaiming the death of the New York Correspondence School, yet he continued to make use of his network of “members” long after its supposed death.
1976 saw the beginning of the Silhouette project, in which Johnson used the profiles of friends and strangers as the base for a collage. Herein lies the inspiration for the accompanying silhouette.
Johnson became increasingly reclusive until his suicide on Jan. 13, 1995. Some consider his suicide to be his final performance, noting that the number 13 appears frequently in the circumstances surrounding the incident, from the date on which it happened to the number of the motel room where he stayed the night before. When his home was opened, hundreds of collages were found arranged, not just placed or strewn about.
The silhouette included with this article can be doodled on, collaged, painted or otherwise altered to an individual artist's taste. The finished product can be kept or mailed to Ray Johnson c/o PERFORMA 100 West 23rd St, Fl 5 New York, NY 10011. Whether or not you actually send the finished product, this sounds like a fun diversion for the next snow day.
