Raymond Edward Johnson (1927 - 1995) was an important post-Surrealism, pre-Pop collage artist. Johnson was also the founder of the New York Correspondence School(NYCS), and therefore the originator of "correspondence art," the inter-disciplinary art form that uses the postal service in some way (also known as mail art). Here’s what Clive Phillpot has said of Johnson’s NYCS: 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1995 (MCMXCV in Roman) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali is one of the most famous surrealist paintings. ... House I, created by Roy Lichtenstein in 1996, is designed to be an optical illusion. ... Collage (From the French, coller, to stick) is the assemblage of different forms creating a new whole. ... Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium. ...

"People are enrolled in the New York Correspondence School through a communication from Ray Johnson. Upon receiving this information and, perhaps, other communications, they are, of course, drawn inextricably into the Johnsonian network. Other people, as well as members, receive mailings from him: longtime correspondents, friends, and acquaintances, either out of the blue or in response to their missives."

His first experiences using the mail as an art medium stretch back to 1943 with his friend Arthur Secunda. From 1946-48 he studied alongside Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and others at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina with faculty members Joseph Albers, Robert Motherwell, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminister Fuller, and Elaine and Willem DeKooning, among others. Robert Rauschenberg (1925-) is a painter, sculptor, and graphic artist known for helping to redefine American art in the 1950s and 60s, providing an alternative to the then-dominant aesthetic of Abstract Expressionism. ... Cy Twombly (born April 25, 1928, in Lexington, Virginia is an American abstract artist. ... This article is in need of attention. ... Josef Albers (1888 - 1976), was a German artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century. ... Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an Abstract Expressionist painter. ... John Cage John Milton Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American experimental music composer, writer and visual artist. ... Merce Cunningham is a choreography born April 16 1919, Centralia Washington, United States. ... Richard Buckminster Bucky Fuller (July 12, 1895 _ July 1, 1983) was an American visionary, designer, architect, inventor, and writer. ... Willem de Koonings Woman V (1952-53) Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904-March 19, 1997) an abstract expressionist painter was born in Rotterdam in The Netherlands. ...

He moved to Manhattan in the late 1940s and showed annually with the American Abstract Artists which included his friend Ad Reinhart among its members. By 1955, the trailblazing Johnson was painting over and cutting up images of Elvis Presley. It would be seven long years later Johnson's friend Andy Warhol would immortalize Elvis for the first time. By then Johnson had moved on. Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known as The King of Rock n Roll was an American singer, music producer and actor. ... Andy Warhol, photographed by Helmut Newton. ...

Johnson saw his collages as one piece of a complex spectrum of activities that included drawings, his use of the mails, telephone conversations, performance art, poetry and real life, all punctuated with a touch of zen and/or Tao. As a contemporary (and correspondent) of most of the artists participating in Fluxus, Happenings, Neo-Dada, Judson Dance Church and other intermedia activities of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, he was instrumental in transforming the international avant-garde into a coherent network. In doing so, he became the center of a cult of personality that developed inadvertently among younger artists in over fifty countries. The telephone or phone (Greek: tele = far away and phone = voice) is a telecommunications device which is used to transmit and receive sound (most commonly voice and speech) across distance. ... Performance art is art where the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time, constitute the work. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is traditionally a written art form (although there is also an ancient and modern poetry which relies mainly upon oral or pictorial representations) in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Bodhidharma, woodblock print by Yoshitoshi, 1887. ... Taijitu For the people, see Tao people. ... Fluxus (from to flow) is an art movement noted for the blending of different artistic disciplines, primarily visual art but also music and literature. ... Happenings has multiple meanings (besides the straightforward dictionary definition): The Happenings were a 1960s pop music group whose major hits were See You In September and a cover of I Got Rhythm updated for the nascent pop/rock era. ... Cover of the first edition of the publication, Dada. ... For the hypertext system, see Intermedia (hypertext) Intermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s. ... Joseph Stalin is often credited with creating the first modern-day cult of personality. ...

The trailblazing Johnson was a fixture on the Manhattan scene, heralded as an innovator by the heroes-to-be of Pop art and Fluxus. By his own admission, the pre-Factory Warhol crony, Billy Name, borrowed from Johnson and a handful of others who attended Black Mountain College to provide the creative atmosphere that Andy bounced off of. House I, created by Roy Lichtenstein in 1996, is designed to be an optical illusion. ... Fluxus (from to flow) is an art movement noted for the blending of different artistic disciplines, primarily visual art but also music and literature. ... Billy Name was a close friend to Andy Warhol, and one of the Warhol superstars. ...

Meanwhile, Johnson called his own collages "moticos" and stored them in cardboard boxes to be shown in Grand Central Station or on the street. Art critic Suzi Gablick wrote in the book "Pop Art Redefined," "The random arrangement... on a dilapidated cellar door in Lower Manhattan may even have been the first informal happening."

"Ray didn't talk about it, he just did it." says long-time friend Toby Spiselman, "That's why you don't find art magazines lying around quoting the art philosophy of Ray Johnson."

Johnson's iconoclastic blend of Taoist humility and spontaneous improvisation ran contrary to the demands of the marketplace. 'There was no perusal of the meaning of these pieces," Ray told Mark Bloch in 1991,"They just wanted them as objects. 'Aren't these nice! Put them in a museum with nice lighting.' Not the ideas... I wanted to paste things on railroad cars. Nothing to be seen by anyone except coyotes." But when the Pop Art gravytrain appeared instead, "I consciously burned everything in Cy Twombly's fireplace. Those were early nothings... Destroying them was the logical thing to do as a statement." For the French historian and founder of the Annales school, see Marc Bloch Mark Bloch (born January 23, 1956), also known as Pan, P.A.N., Panman, Panpost and the Post Art Network, is an American multi-media artist from Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Since 1982 he has lived in New... Cy Twombly (born April 25, 1928, in Lexington, Virginia is an American abstract artist. ...

Johnson chose instead to give his art away via his Correspondence School, using a rich pallette of bunny head portraits and verbal-visual puns and rhymes carefully designed to confound and amuse the recipient. His love of collaboration and a habit of recycling old works into multi-layered new ones resulted in a flurry of "mail art" circling the globe with instructions to "add to and return to Ray Johnson." Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium. ...

In the early seventies the Whitney Museum asked Ray to invite members of his Correspondence School for what was possibly the first mail art show, and certainly the first one in a major institution. Ray once told Mark Bloch, "For accuracy's sake Marcia Tucker should be credited with the policy of the New York Correspondence School. She took over as an institution. I was merely the person inviting 116 people to be in that show. It said 'Please send to the Whitney Museum (etc.)...' There was no explanation that they'd be exhibited, that they'd be catalogued. They just sent it." Ray was referring to a now standard mail art practice that all work received is exhibited and that all participants are sent documentation of the show in return. For the French historian and founder of the Annales school, see Marc Bloch Mark Bloch (born January 23, 1956), also known as Pan, P.A.N., Panman, Panpost and the Post Art Network, is an American multi-media artist from Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Since 1982 he has lived in New...

Some thirty years and 50 countries later, mail art continues to expand from Johnson's original impetus and in addition to shows and one-to-one correspondence, it has spawned everything from "correspondence dinners" and mail art "congresses" to the omnipresent "zine" network to the do-it-yourself audio cassette exchanges that helped spread punk rock. In fact, if mail art can be considered a movement, none other has lasted longer or reached further.

For decades, in the legendary privacy of his own home in Locust Valley, Ray worked from morning until night, often with the television on in the background, always making up new incarnations of his CorresponDANCE School, (such as the "Taoist Pop Art School"). In the last years of his life, Ray Johnson used inexpensive throw-away snapshot cameras as a tool to make pictures of "set ups" in natural settings of his silhouettes, portraits and other 2 and 3 dimensional objects.

In addition to his mail activity, Johnson continued to do events and make collages until the very end. His death itself may have been his final "event". He told several people in the last days of his life that he was working on his "greatest work". This man who had playfully announced his own death many times, died for real January 13, 1995.

He presumably drowned after a jump from the bridge in Sag Harbor, New York about a two hour drive from his home in Locust Valley. He was last seen by two teenage girls, backstroking away into Sag Harbor Cove two hours after checking into the Barron's Cove Inn in Sag Harbor, near the end of Long Island, NY. The weather was unusually mild for that time of year. Ray was fond of the water. He often took walks along the shore at Oyster Bay near his home. Though he turned 67 years old on the 16th of October, he was going strong, remarkably fit for a man of that age.

He was pulled from the water at 12:35pm Saturday afternoon, January 14. He was clothed in a typical outfit for him: Levi's, a wool sweater, work boots and a wind breaker. A "Paul Is Dead"-like atmosphere has permeated the press since his curious death which Bloch has called the one and only "rayocide." Art mavens quibble about auction prices while correspondents compare notes, sifting through old letters for clues to why he may have taken his own life. Paul McCartney Dead: The Great Hoax, a magazine cashing in on the rumors concerning McCartney. ... Bloch is the surname of: Andy Bloch, professional poker player Baseler dermatologist Bruno Bloch (1878 - 1933) Denise Bloch, WWII radio operator Darius Paul Bloch general Ernest Bloch, composer Ernst Bloch, philosopher Felix Bloch, physicist Ivan Bloch, warfare expert Jules Bloch Konrad Emil Bloch, biochemist Marc Bloch, historian Marcus Elieser Bloch...

External links

• Illustrated biography of artist Ray Johnson.
• Reflections on the death of Ray Johnson
• Panel discussion about Ray Johnson with some of his art world friends and associates.
• Matthew Rose article, Some Assembly Required.
• How to Draw a Bunny, Documentary film about Ray Johnson.