Miroljub Todorovic: Artists' Postage Stamps
Todorovic, Miroljub: Artists' Postage Stamps, in: Marke Umetnika – Artists’ Postage Stamps, Srećna Galerija, SKC, Belgrád, 1981 (Ed. by: Slavko Timotijevic)
Mail Art is, at the moment, reaching its zenith. A great number of exhibitions
has been organized, in the United States in particular, with several
hundreds of artists from all over the world taking part in them. Several
thousands of people is included into the communication network of this
new artists keep on joining it. It is interesting to note that Mail Artists are
recruited equally from the ranks of artists (painters) as well as from
among the poets, designers, print workers, and even from among those
who seem not to have any touching points with art in their profession.
In terms of theory Mail Art has not yet been sufficiently clarified.
Certain theoreticians tend to view it the context of Conceptual Art, as a
kind of its extension, its continuation. This view contradicts the unambiguous
fact that the Mail Art appears on the art scene prior to Conceptualism.
On the other hand, the critics who are more closely related to literature
(Spatola, Perfetti) tend to view Mail Art in the context of literature
(with its meaning considerably broader than it is in terms of the traditional
criticism and theory), that is, as a kind of a new manifestation of the concrete
and visual poetry. Michele Perfetti even introduces a new term -
Telepoetry. (For more details see Mail Art - Mail Poetry (Poštanska
umetnost - Poštanska poezija) Delo magazine N° 2, 1980).
After some hesitation at the beginning, I am more and more determined
to view Mail Art as a completely new and independent art form,
which is entirely separated from both, Conceptualism and Concretism.
So far, Mail Art has expanded and developed to the point that, even
within its own context, some disciplines and subgroups begin to form .
The most significant, at the moment, are Rubber Stamp Art and Artists'
Postage Stamps.
When speaking of innovators in the field, explaining who was the
first, among the artists, to make and use (i. e. send) a postage stamp, art
historians cite Duchamp and Man Ray. Hower, the fact is that Art Postage
Stamps are for the first time produced in a more serious form by Fluxus
Group in the early '60s. The most significant results in this field by the
mid 70s are yielded by Italian artist G. A. Cavellini who created several
series of stamps. The late 70s and early '80s are entirely marked by Artists'
Postage Stamps. The emergence of color xerox, in the United States
in particular, greatly contributed to such a situation. The use of this
technology offered a possibility to a fast and easy reproduction of colored
art stamps.
So far, the most important manifestations of this art form are:
Artist's Postage Stamps and Cancellation Stamps, exhibition by Ulises
Carrión hekd in Amsterdam in 1979; and Commonpress N°18, International
Mail Art Magazine edited and published by New York City artist E. F.
Higgins III.
Carrión's exhibition was equally dedicated to both art postage
stamps and rubber stamps. A part of the exhibited material (works of 150
artists from 25 countries) has been published in Rubber (a Dutch monthly
bulletin about the use of rubber stamp in the arts), with an introduction
by the organizer and entitled Personal Worlds or Cultural Strategies?
E. F. Higgins' project. within the Commonpress, relates exclusively
to Artist's Postage Stamps. The author of this project has defined the subject
- Nudes on Stamps - and the size of the original work which artists
participating in the project should send back to the organizer. Although
they are bound in the magazine of usual outlook, the pages containing
stamps have been printed in way so that, due to perforations, it is
easy to separate them and use in interpersonal communication.
Artist's Postage Stamps have also been published on several occasions
during 1979 and 1980 by Julien Blaine in the information section of
his Doc/k/s magazine.
This year, Libellus, (a monthly Mail Art publication of International
cultureel Centrum from Antwerp, with Guy Schraenen being its editor-in-chief),
has published, in a similar fashion and similar motives, quite a
number of stamps. One of Libellus issues contained Artist's Postage
Stamps printed according to and furry respecting the mail rules.
In Yugoslavia, Mail Art is getting a somewhat greater number of protagonists
than it has gotten them in period prior to the current increasing
interest in it. A valuable theoriticat contribution to Mail Art, and to Avant-Garde
as a whole, has been made by Denis Poniž, Siovenian poet and critic.
We may openly say that, within the Yugoslav context, he is one of
the rare critics who pay their attention to issues dealing with Mail Art. We
should not forget Poniž's practical involvement in Mail Art yielding Mail
Art products, which has not at all been shadowed by his theortical work,
but, on the contrary, these two lines of his activity complement each other harmoniously.
Within the Yugoslav context, Artist's Postage Stamps are currently
produced and distributed prosperously by young artists and poets such as
JarosJav Supek, Ranko Igrić, Radomir Mašić and Sandor Gogoljak, who
deeply believe in innovative character and unconventional form of this insufficiently
defined artistic act. The fact that Mail Art and its forms are
not a privilege of only young innovators, who are yet to get recognition
by Yugoslav cultural circles, is demonstrated by outstanding works by
Svetozar Samurović, a well-known painter of the middle generation, who
joined them in this movement. His Artist's Postage Stamps are, in fact,
minutely executed drawings in form of postage stamps, which once more
confirm the fact that Mail Art - this form of art "which is on the margin of
art," and which, with its inter-media, interdisciplinary, and even ambiguous
nature, "offers... ever changing possibilities" -- does not have its
established canons and rules, that it is "alive and open" to all numerous
and various esthetical investigation.
Translated by Rachel Nitzwah