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PUBLISHER
Soberscove Press

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 7 x 8.5 in. / 200 pgs / 14 bw.

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Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 28   

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ISBN 9781940190204 TRADE
List Price: $20.00 CAD $27.95 GBP £17.50

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In stock

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WORLD

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SOBERSCOVE PRESS

That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson

Edited by Julie J. Thomson. Interviews with David Bourdon Jr., Sevim Fesci, Richard Bernstein, John Held Jr., Diane Spodarek, Randy Delbeke, Richard Pieper, Henry Martin, Sydne Didier, Weslea Sidon, Shirley Samberg, Clive Phillpot.

That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson

"I did one of my most bizarre lectures up at the Rhode Island School of Design. It consisted of my trying to move a piano across a stage, and people kept coming up to ask if they could help, and I said, 'Certainly not! I mean the point is that I can't move this piano, and I'm struggling to move it, and it's obviously not going to get moved across the stage, and I'm putting out a great exertion of energy, and I'm on a public platform, and you are all viewing me, which is the whole point of this thing.' I said, 'You figure it out.'"–Ray Johnson

Ray Johnson (1927–1995) was a singular artist, for whom life and work were inextricably linked. Born in Detroit, Johnson attended Black Mountain College before moving to New York, where his work anticipated Pop art and he was active in early Fluxus circles. Best known for his collages and Mail art activities, including his New York Correspondence School, he operated fluidly in a wide range of modes. For Johnson, everything and everyone were potential material for his art—any form could become a space for artistic activity—and the form of the interview proved no exception.

That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson brings together a selection of eleven interviews and conversations from 1963 to 1987 that offer unique access to Johnson’s distinctive thinking and working methods. These materials, which include exhibition ephemera, an oral history, radio transcripts, and magazine articles, are marked throughout by his humor and close attention to language. Gathering these exchanges for the first time, That Was the Answer serves as an exceptional introduction to Ray Johnson as well as a resource for those who are interested in gaining deeper insight into the artist and his kaleidoscopic body of work.


Born in Detroit, Michigan, Ray Johnson (1927–95) 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 before embracing pop imagery, collage and mail art, producing thousands of collages and other works on paper. His life and death were the subject of the award-winning documentary How to Draw a Bunny(2002).

Featured image is reproduced from 'That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson.' © The Ray Johnson Estate.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Artblog

Matthew Rose

Thomson “curates” a dozen interviews in which Johnson talks, often in a stream of consciousness, about himself, his art and his process — breathing life into his world.

LA Review of Books

Megan N. Liberty

[Johnson's work] encompasses the intimacy of writing personalized letters to strangers.

Hyperallergic

Sarah Rose Sharp

'That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson'... provides a trove of information and explication from the man himself — inasmuch as Johnson was prone to provide answers, rather than raise more questions, coincidences, and ambiguities.

That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson

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