Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus is known for experimental contributions to different artistic media and disciplines and for generating new art forms. These art forms include intermedia, a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins; conceptual art, first developed by Henry Flynt, an artist contentiously associated with Fluxus; and video art, first pioneered by Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell. Dutch gallerist and art critic Harry Ruhé describes Fluxus as "the most radical and experimental art movement of the sixties."
The term artistamp or artist's stamp refers to a postage stamp-like art form used to depict or commemorate any subject its creator chooses. Artistamps are a form of Cinderella stamps in that they are not valid for postage, but they differ from forgeries or bogus Illegal stamps in that typically the creator has no intent to defraud postal authorities or stamp collectors.
Mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the postal service. It initially developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School and the Fluxus movements of the 1960s, though it has since developed into a global movement that continues to the present.
Raymond Edward "Ray" Johnson was an American artist. Known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, he was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art and was described as "New York's most famous unknown artist". Johnson also staged and participated in early performance art events as the founder of a far-ranging mail art network – the New York Correspondence School – which picked up momentum in the 1960s and is still active today. He is occasionally associated with members of the Fluxus movement but was never a member. He lived in New York City from 1949 to 1968, when he moved to a small town in Long Island and remained there until his suicide.
Email art refers to artwork created for the medium of email. It includes computer graphics, animations, screensavers, digital scans of artwork in other media, and even ASCII art. When exhibited, Email art can be either displayed on a computer screen or similar type of display device, or the work can be printed out and displayed.
György Galántai is a Hungarian neo-avant-garde and fluxus artist, organizer of the events of the Chapel Studio in Balatonboglár which run from 1970 to 1973 and founder of the Artpool Art Research Center Budapest. During the Communist Era of Hungary, he organized illegal, underground avant-garde exhibitions and therefore he was considered to be a "dangerous element" by the Party for spreading western propaganda, and was monitored by secret police, who opened the file "Painter" solely documenting his activity. From the late seventies he started an intense correspondence with fellow artist all over the world, joining into the network of mail art even despite the Iron Curtain limited his access for information. In 1979 he created an archive for these correspondences and other documents which he collected on Hungarian neo-avantgarde movements and initiated Artpool which became the largest archive of new mediums such as fluxus, visual poetry, artists' book, mail art, artistamp etc. in Central Europe.
Robert Watts was an American artist best known for his work as a member of the international group of artists Fluxus. Born in Burlington, Iowa June 14, 1923, he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984. In the 1950s, he was in close contact with other teachers at Rutgers including Allan Kaprow, Geoffrey Hendricks and Roy Lichtenstein. This has led some critics to claim that pop art and conceptual art began at Rutgers.
Artpool Art Research Center is an archive, research space, specialist and media library in Budapest, Hungary, dedicated to international contemporary and avant-garde arts, such as Artist's books, artistamp, mail art, visual poetry, sound poetry, conceptual art, fluxus, installation, performance.
Vittore Baroni, is an Italian mailartist, music critic and explorer of countercultures. Since the mid-1970s he has been one of the most active and respected promoters and documenters of mail art.
John Held Jr. , is an American mailartist, author and performance artist who has been an active participant in alternative art since 1975, particularly in the fields of rubber stamp art, zine culture, and artistamps. He is one of the most prominent and respected promoters and chroniclers of mail art.
Endre Tot born in Sümeg, Hungary, 1937 is a Hungarian artist who lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
Guy Bleus is a Belgian artist, archivist and writer. He is associated with olfactory art, visual poetry, performance art and the mail art movement.
PostHype was a mail art zine founded by John P. Jacob in 1981. The first issue was created, using pressed Letraset on paper, as a birthday gift to the artist Steven Durland, and modeled on Durland's satirical mini-magazine Tacit. Each of the first four post-card sized issues of PostHype was printed using an original rubber stamp by Jacob, hand carved from photographs made using the photo-booth machine at the Times Square arcade known as Playland, which recorded the visits of other mail artists to New York City. Later issues expanded to document various mail art projects organized by Jacob.
Mark Bloch is an American mail artist, performance artist, visual artist, archivist and writer whose work combines visuals and text as well as performance and media to explore ideas of long distance communication.
John P. Jacob is an American writer and curator. He grew up in Italy and Venezuela, graduated from the Collegiate School (1975) in New York City, and studied at the University of Chicago before earning a BA in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic (1981) and an MA in Art History from Indiana University (1994).
Ry Nikonova, also known as Rea Nikonova, was a Russian artist, poet, writer. Many of her artworks are in private and public collections throughout the world.
Davi Det Hompson (1939–1996), also known as David E. Thompson, born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and raised in Warren, Ohio, was a Fluxus book artist, concrete poet, creator of mail art, sculptor and painter living and working in Richmond, Virginia. Hompson's chosen professional name was a nom d'art for David E. Thompson and a transposition of the letters of his name.
Ginny Lloyd is an American artist, noted for her work with mail art, photocopy art, performance art and photography. She organized the Copy Art Exhibition in San Francisco in 1980 with programming devoted to promoting xerography. Her work was included in the exhibition, From Bonnard to Baselitz: A Decade of Acquisitions by the Prints Collection 1978-1988 and listed annually since 1992 in Benezit Dictionary of Artists.
Carlo Pittore born Charles J. Stanley was an American painter, educator, art activist, and publisher, whose primary study, teaching and body of work was figurative art and portrait painting. He was a pioneer in the Mail Art movement, and is noted for opening the first independent art gallery in the East Village, Manhattan. In 1987, Pittore founded "The Academy of Carlo Pittore" in Bowdoinham, Maine. He died of cancer in 2005.
Joel S. Cohen is an American graphic artist and cofounder, along with Diane E. Milder, of Ragged Edge Press, an independent offset printing company in New York City. Principally recognized for his creative mail art projects and artistic collaborations with Thomas Kerr and Kurt Vonnegut, Cohen has been creating, printing, and distributing progressive political art since the early 1970s.
