| "They will go Underground" by John Held, Jr. When I first became aware of mail art through my interest in rubber stamp art, I was like a sponge trying to soak up all I could. Then in 1976, I read in The Saturday Review, an article by Katherine Kuh, "The Preservation of the Avant-Garde," about a remarkable woman named Jean Brown, who seemed to have her finger on the very pulse of the heartbeat I was seeking to discover. "It is always the marginal she stresses-such manifestations as concrete poetry, rubber stamp art, the vagaries of video. She is after elusive connections, the small interstices that relate the recent past to less-publicized present-day directions...Other borderline movements she considers extensions of Dada and also perhaps Fluxus are Postcard Art and Lettrisme. For some years certain artists have denounced what they view as the sterility of museums and private galleries. They resent, too, the difficulty of breaking through the official barriers that prevent them from reaching a public, and as a result they are turning to 'mail art' via postcards and letters."1 Before I moved to Dallas in 1981, I visited Jean Brown's archive in the foothills of Massachusetts' Berkshire mountains many times, and she became a mentor to me. She was famous for lunches served to scholars and artists weary from rummaging through her collections of Dada and Surrealist ephemera, hard-to-find magazines on contemporary art from a myriad of countries, exhibition catalogs, letters, artist publications, the most complete information on Fluxus. It was a two pronged attack: nourishment of the body and soul. In 1962 Jean Brown was asked to lend a small number of works by Marcel Duchamp in honor of the artist's visit to Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley. Taking Duchamp by car to catch his train back to New York, Jean questioned him about the future of art with its current emphasis on consumer, rather than spiritual values. "What will happen to serious artists who hope to retain these qualities in their work," she asked. "They will go underground," Duchamp declared.2 There are many contemporary artists who consider themselves children of Duchamp. But for mail artists he holds a very special place. He was perhaps the initial practitioner of the artform when he posted the work, "Rendez-vous du Dimanch 6 Fevrier 1916," four postcards fitted together implying a message but without actual meaning, which Duchamp presented to his neighbors Walter and Louise Arensberg. French critic Jean-Marc Poinsot has stated that, "This is to our knowledge the first artistic phenomenon to derive its meaning from the use of the mails, and it is remarkable that it is in contradiction with the habitual means of utilization of the postal service. The meaning of the item is derived from the communication function of the institution employed, as well as from its nature as a complementary relay..."3 The practice of mail art has itself become a complementary relay. It bypasses the art and gallery system allowing the artist to convey his work among a variety of correspondents across cultural boundaries. Rather then join the fray in the marketplace of commerce, it is a gift among friends partaking in the marketplace of ideas. In fact, while there are few rules in mail art, there is one basic tenant that, though often debated, has held firm - mail art and money don't mix. And here's why: when you are interacting with a number of correspondents, often as many as several hundred, you can't maintain an open system if each and every one is asking one another a dollar for this and a dollar for that. You enter into the interplay of exchange on an equal basis, no one person's exchange more valuable then the next. You expand energy, and perhaps your capital, in an equation that presupposes that you will eventually reap what you sow. Expanding energy in the pursuit of art, rather then the pursuit of reputation in a corrupted environment, is perhaps why the artist of today chooses to go underground. Duchamp had fame thrust upon him at the young age of twenty-six when his Nu Descendant un Escalier became a cause c�lebre at the Armory Show. He then turned his back on the attendant notoriety. Society wanted to make him a clown. He confounded their expectations by giving up painting to pursue the issues raised by his explorations on La Mari�e mise a nu par ses C�libataires, m�me (the Large Glass). Few of us are immune to the lure of worldly praise, but it is easier and more legitimate to reject it once its been obtained than to deal with the realization that it will never be secured. To survive a lack of mainstream recognition, the underground artist has formed an alternative system of his and her own. Within it he or she obtains feedback from colleagues, receiving satisfaction from a smaller, more knowledgeable, audience. Take the matter of exhibitions. The mainstream artist is forced to pay a fee to enter into a competition with peers. The pursuit of reputation becomes a contest. In contrast, the mail art show asks for no fee; accepts all work submitted; and provides each participant with documentation of the exhibition. In this alternative situation, cooperation, not competition, rules the day. A community is fostered that can move forward free from jealousy. Because let's face it - when you "make it" in the artworld, it's at the expense of someone else. And that someone else is not necessarily less talented or motivated then you are, but sometimes only less wise in the ways of the world. It has nothing to do with art, and everything to do with connections, posturing, and luck. Aside from the occasional exposure generated by mail art shows, the mail artist has no real public. It is a process carried on between practitioners. To know mail art is to do mail art. At it's lowest common denominator mail art can be described as a global network of artists that decorate envelopes, share information, and collaborate on cooperative projects - but that doesn't fully explain it's appeal. When Ray Johnson began his postal activities in the fifties, it was a parlour game among artworld intelligentsia that became known as the New York Correspondence School of Art. As it rippled outward and began attracting a broader-based audience, correspondence mutated into correspondance, a flowing ever-changing performance between practitioners. The act of the missive being anonymously marked by the post office, delivered to a mailbox, the addressee comfortably situating himself to begin the ritual of opening the letter, receiving news of a mutual friend, and then a following letter from the the person in question - that's the magic of mail art: the world in a mail box, all its diversity delivered to one's doorstep. The disparate becoming apparent. Mail art is not the only refuge of the underground artist, although it is an umbrella for a host of mediums operating away from the mainstream such as rubber stamp art, fax, the artist postage stamp, photocopy art, artist's books, and cassette culture. Two of the largest fields that younger artists are populating are zines and telematic art. Both have connections with mail art, but operate independently. Zine culture arose from science fiction fandom, the small press, punk and independent music magazines, as well as artist publications. Long a stable of underground publishing, the field exploded in the mid-eighties with the appearance of Factsheet Five. Edited by Mike Gunderloy, the publication began reviewing the zines sent in from a variety of different scenes. Soon new publishers began appearing solely for the sake of being reviewed in, and receiving a free copy of, Factsheet Five. Whatever the case, the field exploded and there is now a worldwide movement of small independently published zines in the fields of poetry, music, art, queer, and alternative lifestyles.4 The Internet has generated a host of telecommunication projects between fin de si�cle virtual correspondents. In many ways, mail art has served as a model of communication between this newer technology. Those on the "Net" are repeating the cooperative exchange of ideas that was done by snail-mail participants in the "Eternal Network," as mail artists have been calling themselves for over twenty years. Duchamp rejected the professional life of the painter. He was dependent on no public or dealer. Instead he was free to operate outside the system to pursue his own concerns on a trajectory of his own devising. The Large Glass was begun in 1912 and was eventually left unfinished in 1923. His final major work, Etant Donn�s, was surreptitiously begun in 1946 and completed in 1966. The consensus was that Duchamp had given up art. But all the while he was working in isolation. Few were aware of the endeavor. His wife Teeny was pressed into service helping him to gather materials for the work, and his friend Bill Copley was let in on the secret, but to all practical appearances Duchamp had vacated his given field. Duchamp had dropped hints that his work was continuing. Delivering a paper on March 20, 1961, at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art during a panel with the sculptor Louise Nevelson and the painters Larry Day and Theodore Stamos to discuss the topic, "Where do we go from Here?," Duchamp outlined developments in modern art that had lead him to the conclusion that artists were moving away from a purely "retinal art". The art movements of the last hundred years, Duchamp stated, "boils down almost entirely to the single dilemma of the 'representative and the non- representative'." "Therefore I am inclined, after this examination of the past, to believe that the young artist of tomorrow will refuse to base his work on a philosophy as over-simplified as that of the 'representative or non-representative' dilemma." "I am convinced that, like Alice in Wonderland, he will be led to pass through the looking-glass of the retina, to reach a more profound expression." "The young artist of tomorrow will, I believe, have to go still further in this same direction, to bring to light startling new values which are and will always be the basis of artistic revolutions." "If we now envisage the more technical side of a possible future, it is very likely that the artist, tired of the cult for oils in painting, will find himself completely abandoning this five-hundred-year-old process, which restricts his freedom of expression by its academic ties." In addition to it's ties to academia, it's concentration on matters optical, and the commodification of art, Duchamp envisions a "levelling down of pr esent taste and its immediate result will be to shroud the near future in mediocrity." "In conclusion," Duchamp stated to the panel and audience, "I hope that this mediocrity, conditioned by too many factors foreign to art per se, will this time bring a revolution on the ascetic level, of which the general public will not even be aware and which only a few initiates will develop on the fringe of a world blinded by economic fireworks." "The great artist of tomorrow will go underground."5 For forty years mail art has brewed in the stew of a global cauldron. It has linked artists leery of commercial success and fleeting reputation. It penetrated behind the Iron Curtain and gave hope to artists in repressive societies. It became a model of interaction for new telecommunicative technologies. It accelerated the zine and independent music revolutions. The true nature of mail art's impact is still unknown. Its final chapter still unwritten. But the tale is beginning to be told. One of the foremost chroniclers of the field is Texan Daniel Plunkett of Austin who edits the magazine ND6 . Called, "the premier avant-garde music and arts magazine," by no less a reviewing source than the intrepid bible of zinedom, Factsheet Five7 , the magazine has a simple credo, "Contact-Exchange-Document." Plunkett writes that, "The magazine is a document of a process of exchange and it serves to present artists and ideas which are vital and interesting to us. We are interested in those artists and activities which have something to say and who have overcome established frameworks and conventions. Our goal is to bring forward these dialogs and serve as a reference and document in the process." Plunkett's wide net, varied interests, and innate sense of inquiry is what distinguishes him from most publishers. "We are not limited only to music, or performance, or any other medium. Many of the artists and musicians share some of the same questions and are active on may levels, and by exploring it all one can get a better grasp of possibilities. All I can hope is that you read the interviews and articles and get something positive from them. We are learning the same time you are."8 The fact that new mediums are appearing just as Duchamp foretold, that artists are increasing turning to conceptual rather than visual concerns, and that they are more likely to be concerned with aesthetic rather than monetary ends, indicates that a new revolution in art may indeed come from an untraditional source. This is not to say that painting, or sulpture, or any of the more academic mediums are dead, or are not currently producing works of note, only that the next great leap effecting the direction of art in the next century is just as likely to come from a currently unappreciated source as a universally accepted one. Those interested in the future course of art must keep their eyes open, their prejudices to a minimum, and if necessary, to become personally involved. The future revolution in art may well be televised, but only after it has finished marinating away from the mainstream. |