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Johnson, Ray, 1927-1995

 Person

Dates

  • Existence: 1927 October 16 - 1995 January 13

Nationality

American

Found in 7 Collections and/or Records:

A Collage in Which Life = Death = Art / Kimmelman, Michael; Johnson R; Beuys J; Cage J; Rauschenberg R; Phillpot C., 2002

 Item
Identifier: CC-39483-41439
Scope and Contents

This is a review of the circumstances of Johnson's death by drowning. His work was exhibited in Feigen Contemporary and a film about him, "How to Draw a Bunny," shown at the Film Forum. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 2002

An Anthology [flyer], 1963

 Item — Box 292: [Barcode: 31858072460714]
Identifier: CC-50815-71893
Scope and Contents This object is an announcement card for the publication of "An Anthology." According to 6 Decades Books: LaMonte Young devised this extraordinary pop-up multiple as a prepublication announcement for An Anthology of Chance Operations, the book he co-published with Jackson MacLow in 1963. An Anthology of Chance Operations was designed by George Maciunas and includes work by Young and Mac Low, along with George Brecht, John Cage, Terry Riley, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono, Henry Flynt, Walter De Maria, Nam June Paik, Dieter Rot, Robert Morris, Al Hansen, and others. The publication is a compendium of the era's dada-inflected avant-garde represented by a collection of works in which traditional boundaries between music, writing, art, and theater were discarded in favor of an aesthetics based ideas, actions, and ephemerality. The book is widely regarded as the high point publication of the Fluxus movement and a founding document of contemporary art. Young created a few dozen copies of the...
Dates: 1963

Fluxus / Gaglione, Bill; Held, John Jr.; Johnson R., 1997

 Item
Identifier: CC-28712-30016
Scope and Contents

A typed, photocopied caption at the bottom of the sheet reads, You have been dropped from the New York Correspondence School - Ray Johnson. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1997

Gibes at the Experts from an Enigmatic Chatterbox / Cotter, Holland; Johnson R., 1999

 Item
Identifier: CC-31784-33300
Scope and Contents

This review of "Ray Johnson:Correspondences" at the Whitney Mueum of American Art describes Johnson's collages as masterworks. "The visual elements they incorporated were equally diverse: pieces of photographs, magazine clips, commercial logos, abstract shapes, cartoons and above all, words: jokes, puns, anagrams, song lyrics, poetry, nonsense syllables, exclamations, dedications and lists of names of artists and actors, social luminaries and friends. The results amount to a consummate insider, a figure who was at once everywhere and nowhere in the art world, and who used his work to spin a personal myth." The Sackner Archive contains a collage of Johnson's. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1999

Pictures To Be Read/Poetry To Be Seen [box], 1967

 Item — Box 291: [Barcode: 31858072460706]
Identifier: CC-04845-4938
Scope and Contents

This duplicates the correspondence for the exhibition archive and includes letters and cards by Arakawa, George Brecht, Tenny Duchamp, Ovind Fahlstrom, Ray Johnson, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Ron Kitaj, Gianni Simonetti, and Wolf Vostell. There are drawings by Baruchello, Mary Bauermeister, George Brecht, and James Nutt, and a collage by Granni Simonetti that deals with plans for assembling the found objects to be placed in a plexiglas box by museum personnel. The box is also accompanied by the catalogue of the exhibition. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1967

Transmit: Fluxus, Mail Art, Net Works / Silverman G ; Silverman L ; Hendricks J ; Maciunas G ; Johnson R ; Padin C ; Janssen R ; Brecht G., 1999

 Item
Identifier: CC-32430-34004
Scope and Contents

Transmit: Fluxus - Mail Art - Net.works traces the development of collaborative networks as communication systems between artists from the early Fluxus and Mail Art movements to contemporary Web Art while exploring their artistic legacy. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates: 1999