...including Ray Johnson(USA), the Father of Mail Art...
Thinking with visual and verbal images as we do, we must be careful with the implications of images. Ray Johnson, who never fathered a child, was in no sense "the father of mail-art." In the 2nd half of 1962, he set in motion a network of people mailing paper-objects in relays: "Please send to..." Retroactively, 19th century decorated envelopes and hand-drawn postcards could be designated "mail-art," but could not be assigned to a "network." Mail-artists of several nations object to Ray as "the father of mail-art," and happily for us all, they produce evidence of artists unselfconsciously making "mail-art" across decades. However, that retrospection seems inspired by Ray's network, which was related more to chain-letters or to passing notes in high-school, than to an artists aestheticizing an envelope. He dated his own private mail-art from high-school (much of it survives), but dated the public network from autumn, 1962, when E. M. Plunkett named it the New York Correspondence School of Art, facetiously, but also fruitfully, for thereafter a school of mail-artists did indeed construct itself, otherwise I would have no place to address this note.
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