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PUBLISHER
Karma, New York

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.75 x 12.25 in. / 296 pgs / 296 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2015 p. 41   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781938560828 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CDN $55.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

TERRITORY
WORLD

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KARMA, NEW YORK

Ray Johnson


Ray JohnsonPioneer of mail art and an early participant in both the Pop and Fluxus movements, Ray Johnson created complex, punning works that ingeniously combine text and image, celebrity culture and art history, wit and melancholy. Figures such as Mickey Mouse, Elvis Presley, James Dean, Michael Jackson and Calvin Klein models populate his many collages—a candid foreshadowing of current societal obsession. In the 20 years since his death, Johnson's work has become an increasingly accurate depiction of our fragmented and overstimulated society and includes some of the most recognizable imagery from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beautifully designed, this massive compendium includes 296 color reproductions of collages, drawings, interventions and other ephemera from Johnson's estate.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Ray Johnson (1927–1995) studied under Josef Albers and Robert Motherwell at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and worked as a painter early in his career, exhibiting alongside Ad Reinhardt and Charmion von Wiegand before embracing pop imagery, collage and mail art, producing thousands of collages and other works on paper. His life and death (by suicide, jumping from a bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island) were the subject of the award-winning documentary How to Draw a Bunny (2002).

Featured image is reproduced from Ray Johnson.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Art in America

David Ebony

In this compendium, which brings together scores of Johnson's witty collages and drawings, often incorporating iconic figures from the 20th century, as well as other ephemera from Johnson's estate, the artist is revealed to be a pioneer of both Pop and Fluxus aesthetics.

Ray Johnson

STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

For assistance locating a copy, please see our list of recommended out of print specialists

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/12/2015

Raw and Very Punk: Ray Johnson

Raw and Very Punk: Ray Johnson

Featured image is reproduced from Ray Johnson, Karma's indispensible, copiously illustrated and beautifully designed book on the influential artist who heralded Pop, Conceptual and mail art and took his own life as his final artwork in 1995. In a major New York Times feature this weekend, Randy Kennedy quotes Karma's Brendan Dugan, who organized an exhibition of Johnson's late work in the fall: "'He kind of landed by default in the book and ephemera world, and to a large extent that's really where his work has been living." Mr. Dugan said he had been drawn to Mr. Johnson in part because of his avid following among younger, punk-influenced artists but also those whose work seems to have little affinity with Mr. Johnson's… For the show at Karma, Mr. Dugan was allowed to pore over reams of paper works in the L. Feigen & Co. archive, made by Mr. Johnson mostly in the last decade of his life, 'and what I saw was a total discovery to me, because a lot of it was very raw and very punk,' he said. 'Here was this guy in his 60s, and he's still up to it, to the very end, pulling in new material from the culture and making this very weird stuff that feels very contemporary now.'" continue to blog


RAY JOHNSON MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

Ray Johnson and William S. Wilson: Frog Pond Splash

RAY JOHNSON AND WILLIAM S. WILSON: FROG POND SPLASH

Siglio

ISBN: 9781938221279
USD $29.95
| CAN $41.95 UK £ 27

Pub Date: 11/20/2020
Active | In stock


That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson

THAT WAS THE ANSWER: INTERVIEWS WITH RAY JOHNSON

Soberscove Press

ISBN: 9781940190204
USD $20.00
| CAN $27.95 UK £ 17.5

Pub Date: 9/4/2018
Active | In stock


Ray Johnson

RAY JOHNSON

Matthew Marks Gallery

ISBN: 9781944929114
USD $50.00
| CAN $67.5 UK £ 45

Pub Date: 7/25/2017
Active | In stock


Ray Johnson: The Paper Snake

RAY JOHNSON: THE PAPER SNAKE

Siglio

ISBN: 9781938221033
USD $34.70
| CAN $45.95 UK £ 30

Pub Date: 7/31/2014
Active | In stock


Not Nothing: Selected Writings by Ray Johnson 1954-1994

NOT NOTHING: SELECTED WRITINGS BY RAY JOHNSON 1954-1994

Siglio

ISBN: 9781938221040
USD $45.00
| CAN $60 UK £ 40

Pub Date: 7/31/2014
Active | In stock