International Mail Art books

At the core of the Mail Art/ists' Books exhibition are prime examples in the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts relating to the origins of Mail Art: Jochen Höller's Big Book of Questions, On Kawara's irreverent postcards, the famous Xerox Book and an example of the equally famous Fluxus Box containing booklets, pamphlets, screen prints, rubber stamps and other typical Fluxus-themed items. These books signal the very nature of the medium, or, as Fluxus defined it, one of many intermedia, occupying an indeterminate position in a myriad of art mediums. Only once the medium enters the postal system, is it considered art. Mail Art is essentially playful, as is evident in On Kawara's single, wry, if not droll message on the postcards he sent to his friends: "I am still alive", each postcard claims reassuringly. Or Höller's indefatigable listing of 333.333 Frequently Asked Questions on the internet, all typed out in one string sentence in his hefty book. These books also attest to the ever-evolving nature of Mail Art and what can potentially be sent through the system, a system that is also changing continuously with technological advancement.

4. Andrew Verster

Visiting Paris and London in 1985, Andrew Verster (1937 - 2020) cut up one of his art works (Mère et Fillette) in twelve postcard size pieces and sent them intermittently back form these two cities to the Director of the National Society of Art Gallery in Durban, who received all of them, and later gave them back to Verster. A typical example of Mail Art, the work bears testimony to the trust and efficiency of the mailing system of that time.

5. Dada South?

Concluding the seminal exhibition, Dada South? at Iziko; South African National Gallery in Cape Town, 2009/2010, curators Roger van Wyk and Kathryn Smith posted various pieces of ephemera to the art community. The large-scale envelope contained, among other things, a magnificent timeline (recto), as well as a collaged artwork (verso), juxtaposing manifestations of local, African quasi-Dada artworks with these of the European and American Dadists. In the exhibition, South African artworks from the 1960s to the then present were exhibited alongside a collection of artworks and publications by historical Dada artists. The juxtaposition invites a fresh enquiry into South African artistic production by highlighting some similarities in method, strategy and imagery, between socially critical South African art and the art of Dada. In Dada South? curators Roger van Wyk and Kathryn Smith consider the legacy of socially critical and experimental South African art in relation to the influence of Dada. Many people are familiar with South African 'resistance art', produced in the late 1970s to early 1990s, which deals with political subject matter in a direct way. Dada South? was a chance to broaden this view to include art which criticises and mocks any political and social forms and institutions. It was also an occasion to reconsider the influence of non-western cultures on Dada activities. Their post-exhibition 'mail art' was an attempt to correspond from the periphery to the centre, the upshot being a magnificent publication, Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other (2016).

6. John Peffer: Think of Number Six

7. Das Groβe Buch der Fragen [The Big Book of Questions]

Das Groβe Buch der Fragen [The Big Book of Questions] is an artist's character to ask questions. Sooner or later the question comes up: what do other people ask? The Austrian artist Jochen Höller (1977 - ) filtered 333.333 questions asked online and collected them on the book's 1594 pages. Here we can find an enormous catalogue of questions bound for eternity yet many of which might have lost their relevance within days of their asking.

8. Xerox Book

The first examples of what were to become Fluxusevent scores date back to John Cage's famous class at The New School, where artists such as George Brecht, Al Hansen, Allan Kaprow, and Alison Knowles began to create art works and performances in musical form. One of these forms was the event. Events tend to be scored in brief verbal notations. These notes are known as event scores. In a general sense, they are proposals, propositions, and instructions. Thus, they are sometimes known as proposal pieces, propositions, or instructions. The first collections of Fluxus event scores were the working sheets for Fluxconcerts. They were generally used only by the artist-performers who were presenting the work. With the birth of Fluxus publishing, however, collections of event scores soon came to take three forms. The first form was the boxed collection. These were individual scores written or printed on cards. The classic example of this boxed collection is George Brecht's Water Yam. A second format was the book or pamphlet collection of scores, often representing work by a single artist. Yoko Ono's Grapefruit is probably the best known of these collections. Now forgotten, but even more influential during the 1960s, were the small collections that Dick Higgins published in the Something Else Press pamphlet series under the Great Bear imprint. These small chapbooks contained work by Bengt af Klintberg, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, and many other artists working in the then-young Fluxus and intermedia traditions. The booklets were highly portable. Even more important, they were easily copied using what was then the new Xerox technology. As a result, the Great Bear pamphlets spread an idea about what art - and performance art - could be to a vast and ever wider circle of artists and critics interested in new ways of working. The third format involved any of several large-format collections, often carrying the work of many artists in neatly typeset columns on a large sheet of paper. The best known of these was the 1966 Fluxfest Sale Sheet compiled by George Maciunas as chief editor and publisher of Fluxus. This tradition carried forward the early concert collections in new forms, and these collections included the compilations that Ken Friedman published at Fluxus West in the 1960s, as well as the Fluxus compilations organized and reprinted by other publishers in the 1970s.

9. Fluxus Island

The work is handprinted in silkscreen by Franticham (Francis Van Maele & Antic-Ham) in the studios from Redfoxpress in Achill Island, Ireland in 2009. Various Fluxis-themed items are housed in a wooden box (with a slide-out top) made by Hatzel Holzwaren GmbH in Germany while the rubberstamps are made by Ets. Nimax in Luxembourg. The work includes the book I See Sadness, bound in printed glass covers; a pamphlet Fluxus Island Manual providing details of the contents of the box; and a portfolio of 20 prints in the manner of the artists John Cage, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri, Ben Vautier & Emmett William.

10. Kathryn Smith

Tackling the curious brief given by a number of avant-garde artists of having to produce a 'non-catalogue' for an exhibition of their work at the newly opened SMAC gallery in Stellenbosch in 2007, Kathryn Smith sent out a call, via email, to about eighty people around the world, all involved in the arts, soliciting their views of the nature and significance of the avant-garde in Contemporary Art. The responses - veritable art works, created by image and text - were all sent back to her via email correspondence, which Smith then collated in an artists' book form, called One Million and Forty-Four Years (and Sixty-Three Days). According to a declaration by Fluxus artist, Robert Filliou, January 17, 1963, is Art's Birthday.

Before this day, he maintained, there was no art, but on this day, Art was 1 000 000 years old. Smith simply added the years and days from that date till the opening of the SMAC show.

11. Christo Coetzee

A generous British Council grant enabled Christo Coetzee to study in Japan between 1959 and 1960 under the Gutai Art Association, an avant-garde post-World War Two group of young artists. Gutai is the eastern version of the popular Abstract Expressionism in America. A deliberate strategy of the group, aiming to keep the West informed about their art, was to sent the Gutai magazine via the postal system to prominent artists and critics in the metropolitan art centres in Europe and America, as well as miniatures of their work. These miniatures were based on the Japanese new year's tradition of exchanging so-called nengajo, well-wishing cards, embellished with their art on the reverse. Coetzee adopted this tradition, not only sending Christmas cards with his artwork on the cover to this family and friends and the collectors of his art, but also decorating the invitations to his exhibitions with original art works.

12. MAP

Mounting exhibitions in such unconventional spaces as hotel rooms and restaurants, Modern Art Projects (MAP) was a series of site-specific art events, collaborations, and exhibitions, initiated by restauranteur, Harrie Siertsema. The series were supplemented by MAP's 'black books'. Highly accessible and freely posted to art lovers, these square-format black booklets, with text and images, contextualised these art events, and documented an alternative aspect of South African art history. Close to forty of these booklets were periodically posted, and collectors collated them in the famous 'black box' that served as convenient repository.

13. Tito Zungu

Zungu's early works were produced during the late 50s and early 60s and made on the backs of envelopes for himself and the community of migrant labourers around him. Colin Richards points out that Zungu's work seems to be "founded in the impulse to communicate." Not only is it done on the very container/carrier of communication between people (envelopes and letters) it also depicts modes of transport (ships and aeroplanes) and means of broadcast (radios) which signal transmission of news and ideas and which promise interchange between people.