Dust jacket: Over the last twenty years an increasing number of artists have turned to expressing themselves through postcards. Whether by way of installation, collage, addition to, or alteration of existing postcards, or the production of postcards themselves, many prominent artists employ the medium in some form. Artists' Postcards traces the origin of artists' fascination with postcards from the early 1900s but with a focus on the contemporary, revealing the significant number of artists who have made creative and unusual artworks in postcard form. With 400 images of postcards created by many well-known artists, Artists' Postcards is the first critical guide to the subject. From surrealists to Fluxus and conceptual artists, this book includes an array of historical and contemporary postcards by such artists as George Grosz, Bruce Nauman, Richard Long, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, Joseph Beuys, Ben Vautier, Dieter Roth, Ray Johnson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gavin Turk, Tacita Dean, Gilbert and George and Rachel Whiteread.Cooper proposes the following categories for Artists' Postcards: 1) artist-designed postcards, 2) manipulated postcards, 3) composite postcard pieces, 4) postcards in collage, 5) boxes, sets and books of postcards, 6) postcards in mail art, 6) postcards presses, designers and photographers, 7) political / polemic postcards, 8) promotional postcards, 9) graphic postcards and 10) postcards as pictures.Tom Phillips is represented by several of his own postcards and his seminal work,"The Postcard Century: 2000 Cards and Their Messages." The painter Tom Phililps concentrates on the human element in his extensive collecting of posted postcards. In the Postcard Century, Phillips writes, 'The postcard is seamingly interesting from the beginning of the century to its end. In all its history it has defined life rather than merely mirrored it, giving a more human picture of the world than any other medium." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.