I did not know of Ray Johnson’s art before stumbling across information about the exhibit, “Please Send to Real Life” at The Morgan Library. I like the vernacular, collage aspects of his photography and art. It is not something to hang on a wall. It is not “beautiful” in any sense. But I really appreciate the immediacy of it, and its specificity. In the video introducing the exhibit, Joel Smith (the curator) describes Johnson’s work as:
Maybe the most salient characteristic of Ray Johnson’s art is its intimacy. He loved the idea of art as correspondence, as something that comes from one person and goes to one other person.
This description, “art as correspondence,” so neatly captures why I print and send postcards to random people, often unannounced, or leave small piles of them in cafes or on benches, each with some thought related in some way to the photo. Sometimes I open a map, point to a city, find some random address, and send a postcard to it. Other times I head out on foot with a stack of postcards, find a cafe, and write a bunch while enjoying a cup of coffee.
Often these postcards are just scenes that caught my eye, becoming an opportunity to imagine an absurd history that could describe what I see. Some postcards are more typical, postcard images. Either way, they are opportunities to enact art as a correspondence, from me to a single other person.
While I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of Ray Johnson’s art, per se, I am a fan of his understanding of what art can be.