Ray Johnson Correspondence to Robert Rauschenberg
in The Museum of Modern Art Archives

The Museum of Modern Art Archives
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019-5497
https://www.moma.org/research/archives/

January 2016

The Museum of Modern Art Archives

Finding aid prepared by Elena Cordova

Biographical Note

Ray Johnson: Ray Johnson was born on October 16, 1927 in Detroit, Michigan. His artistic training began in high school when he attended a technical school and studied advertising arts. As a young man Johnson also studied at the Detroit Art Institute and the Ox-Bow School in Saugatuck, Michigan. In 1945, Johnson left Detroit to attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina. With the exception of the spring semester of 1946, Johnson spent the next three years at the experimental arts college studying drawing, painting, and graphic arts with important mid-century artists including Josef Albers, Lyonel Feininger, and Robert Motherwell. By the fall of 1948, Johnson had also befriended other students and visiting lecturers such as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Richard Lippold, Ruth Asawa, and Robert Rauschenberg.

In 1949, Johnson moved to New York City and became an active and prolific member of the downtown art scene. He continued his friendships with those artists he met at Black Mountain College and worked alongside new artist-friends such as Cy Twombly and Ad Reinhardt. The 1950s were marked by Johnson's frequent manipulation of words and images in his work. According to his to the estate of Ray Johnson, this technique made Johnson an "artistic alchemist" who "could turn the detritus of ordinary life into proverbial art gold" (Ray Johnson, 2016). By 1954, many of Johnson's works took the form of "moticos" (a term coined by Johnson and derived from an anagram for the word "osmotic"), small-scale, irregularly shaped collages upon which he pasted images from popular culture. While the use of pop-culture referents in Johnson's "moticos" (like images of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe) leads some art historians and critics to classify him as one of the earliest practioners of Pop Art (in the vein of Andy Warhol), most recognize him as the father of Mail or Correspondence Art, which not only relied on Pop Art imagery, but also on those techniques that were simultaneously emerging out of the Conceptual and performance art movements.

Beginning in the 1950s, and continuing in varying degrees until his death, Johnson built up an informal network of friends, acquaintances, and even strangers with whom he exchanged letters, collages, "moticos," posters, and other works via the postal system. These mailings were famously stamped with the phrase, "Please add and return to Ray Johnson" and in 1962 Johnson's continually expanding project was playfully dubbed the New York Correspondance [sic] School. Johnson famously admonished the growing gallery system taking hold in New York, but by 1965 his mail art network had grown so large that Grace Glueck, art critic for The New York Times, called him "New York's most famous unknown artist" (Glueck, 1965).

In 1968 Johnson was mugged in Manhattan. Soon thereafter Andy Warhol was shot and Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Prompted by these violent events, Johnson moved to Long Island where he continued to work in semi-permanent seclusion. Johnson died on January 13, 1995, after jumping off a bridge in Sag Harbor.

Robert Rauschenberg: Robert Rauschenberg, perhaps one of the most well-known American artists of the mid-twentieth century, was born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg on October 22, 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas. After a short stint in the Navy during the World War II, Rauschenberg enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris on the GI Bill. Upon his return to United States in 1948, Rauschenberg enrolled at Black Mountain College where he studied under the college's rector, Josef Albers. Rauschenberg's time at Black Mountain was extremely formative to his artistic practice and he remained connected to the progressive arts school, returning often through 1952. In 1949, Rauschenberg moved to New York City, where he became friends and collaborators with other important figures of the city's art scene (most notably among them Cy Twombly, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Jasper Johns) and continued to study at the Art Students League.

As a mixed-media artist Rauschenberg sometimes defies stylistic categorization and has been labeled a Pop Artist, an Abstract-Expressionist, and a Neo-Dadaist. He is most well-known for his monochromatic paintings; his combines, which famously included trash and found objects from New York City's streets; and his set and costume designs for avant-garde dance-theater performances staged by Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Trisha Brown. In 1993, Rauschenberg was awarded the National Medal of Arts, and in 1995 he received the Leonardo da Vinci Award of Arts in recognition of his over forty-year career as an artist.

Beginning in 1968, Rauschenberg split time between New York and Captiva Island, Florida where he died of heart failure on May 12, 2008.

Bibliography for Biographical Note

Johnson, Ray and Ina Blom. The Name of the Game: Ray Johnson's Postal Performance. Oslo, Norway: National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2009.

Johnson, Ray, Donna M. De Salvo and Catherine Gudis. Ray Johnson: Correspondences. Columbus, Ohio: Wexner Center for the Arts, 1999.

Johnson, Ray, Charles F. Stuckey, Frances F. L. Beatty and Jennifer Grossman. Dear Ray Johnson. New York: Ray Johnson Estate at Richard L. Feigen & Co., 2010.

Johnson, Ray and William S. Wilson. 2007. Ray Johnson, The Early Years. New York, NY: Richard L. Feigen & Co.

"Ray Johnson Biography." http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/biography/. 2016.

Scope and Content Note

This collection contains forty-three correspondence works from Johnson to Rauschenberg. While some of the mailings are undated most were sent between the years 1952 to 1965, which coincide with Johnson's most active and prolific years in New York City. Johnson and Rauschenberg first met at Black Mountain College and remained connected in New York during the years that followed. However, there is no evidence within the collection's materials that Rauschenberg ever replied to any of Johnson's mailings.

The correspondence works in the collection reflect Johnson's typical Mail Art techniques and include small collages, "moticos," newspaper clippings, flyers, and press releases. The inventive quirkiness of Johnson's prose is visible, for example, in his press release for the second meeting of the New York Correspondance School in which he wrote that "no apple sauce will be served at the 2nd Meeting May 2nd. Hand-shaking-hand-clapping New York Correspondance School massage-messengers will not meet Chris Montez, singer of "Foolin' Around…" (folder 38). Johnson's commitment to word-play is identifiable in all documents in this collection, including the outer envelopes, which he often addressed to various iterations of Rauschenberg's name, such as "Texas-Tex Rauschenberg," "Brother Bob Rauschenberg," and "Bobby the Kid Rauschenberg." Additionally, several words and images repeat themselves throughout the forty-three items in the collection, the most identifiable among them being the American flag and the phrase "doublemint." Researchers will find that the collages, clippings, drawings, and writings that comprise this collection are representative of Johnson's whimsical and subversive practice more generally.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

The records are open for research and contain no restricted material.

Ownership and Literary Rights

The Ray Johnson Correspondence to Robert Rauschenberg are the physical property of The Museum of Modern Art. Literary rights, including copyright belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns.

Related Collections at MoMA and Elsewhere

Related Ray Johnson materials can be found in several MoMA Archives' collections including the David Bourdon Correspondence, Miscellaneous Documents from John Margolies, Artist's Letters and Manuscripts, the Avalanche Magazine Archives, and the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection. Related material can also be found in the MoMA Library collection.

Administrative Information

Provenance

The Ray Johnson Correspondence to Robert Rauschenberg were donated to the MoMA Archives by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in 2012.

Preferred Citation

Long version: Ray Johnson Correspondence to Robert Rauschenberg, [folder]. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.

Short version: Ray Johnson, [folder]. MoMA Archives, NY.

Processing and Conditioning Information

The collection came to the Museum arranged according to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation's internal accession numbers. It has subsequently been rearranged in chronological order by the processing archivist.

The materials are in good condition. All correspondence have been encapsulated in polyester sleeves and rehoused in archival acid-free folders and boxes.

Container List