As
a founding figure in the Conceptual Art movement, Ray Johnson predates On Kawara in the conceptual use of employing only written
numbers as Number Art /Word Art. In the present work, Johnson's elevates "Idea over
Object" in his art, where the concept of measurement replaces visual
imagery.
Ray Johnson, 1959. Untitled, Measurement Collage with
measurements of the collaged board written by Johnson. Piece measures 3
1/2 x 5 1/4 in. It is a breakthrough conceptual work executed in a
minimalist way, with a monochrome red-crayon structure on cut black
cardboard.

"Ray Johnson: Mail Art before Email"
Words are like color; they
reflect mood, sentiment, feelings, and temperament. For Ray Johnson,
they were the elements by which his work could be made and come into
existence.

Whether fragments or full sentences, they stood for the character,
mood, and being of each piece. He is, in the classic sense a collagist.
His palette and tools the very ordinary materials of daily life:
letters, stamps, envelopes, words, dates, and addresses, each laid out
in tiny intimate script. Like Joseph Cornell or Kurt Schwitters, his
compositions reside framed, set apart from the world to be protected and
admired. Their essence is in the small scale, like a whisper from a
lover. While the temperament of the art world in those days was big,
bold, and dynamic in paint and scale, Johnson turned the other way,
seeing the power of a quieter and more subdued work of art.

After his education at the now-famous Black Mountain College in North
Carolina in the late 40s, Johnson moved to New York like many artists
look to establish a name and a career. And New York in the 50s was a
hotbed of new art movements and a postwar expansion.

Among his earliest works is this work, "Collage 1959", Johnson used
black paper and red crayon. The work is a play on a picture and frame;
the picture has its dimensions written on it, and it is set against a
black background, the frame, also identified by its dimensions. Simple
and to the point like a Duchamp statement. Through works like this,
Johnson uncovered the quality of words, language, and numbers. This
elegant numeric paradigm anticipates the Conceptual Art movement of the
70s, especially Mel Bochner’s measuring pieces.

"Brown Envelope With Hinge" (1960/63) is an example of Johnson at
work. While Warhol painted Marilyn and Rauschenberg built his Combines,
Johnson created this piece, an assemblage of an envelope and two wooden
fragments dated and signed by the artist, a telling example of less is
more.

The intimate details here are the handwritten address in ink on the
grey envelope with its row of weathered stamps and the miniature date
and signature of the artist on the hammered wooden fragments.

This select group collected here demonstrates his aesthetic but in
various forms. These also represent the passion and curiosity of the
owner, Robert Funk Fine Art, who set out to collect and assemble a group
that demonstrates the quality and charm of such deeply personal and
enigmatic works, artwork now so contrary to the technology-inspired work
now on view across the contemporary art scene.

In many of these collages, postage stamps are used to bring color to
the paper. In others, it is an envelope addressed to a colleague or
friend along with the contents of that envelope, sometimes a written
note; sometimes a photo cut from a magazine. It is a secret between two
people, revealed. Some works are more minimal than others, like a
one-note musical composition by John Cage.

Using the mail as a means to exchange ideas became known as Mail Art.
The Tate Gallery in London described Mail Art: “Mail art began in the
1960s when artists sent postcards inscribed with poems or drawings
through the post rather than exhibiting or selling them through
conventional commercial channels.” They go on to explain: “New York
artist Ray Johnson, who in the mid 1950s, posted small collages, prints
of abstract drawings and poems to art world notables, giving rise to
what eventually became known as the New York Correspondence School. This
movement is shared by a small number of artists, but Johnson is the key
to its existence, and the works assembled here represent a range of
visual themes he developed and used.

Another example is "Grey Envelope with Hinge" from 1960. The
cardboard box was mailed to a friend in New York City; its contents were
a box in which one finds cardboard fragments connected by a screwed
hinge. The piece is dated March 2nd. On a small, if not miniature,
scale, Johnson competes with the larger-scale works of Pop artists like
Jasper Johns or Robert Indiana who used ordinary objects in their
respective paintings and sculpture. Why? To communicate that art is
about life, and Johnson underscores it too by using the energies of the
U.S. Postal Service. A similar work using wood fragment and a hinge is
dated March 15th. The neatly stacked wood fragments are connected by a
device meant to link the two separate parts. The abstract forms are a
visual metaphor for linking two people together, which is the function,
purpose, and ultimate goal of the mail. It becomes the very raison
d’être of the Mail Art form and movement.

"Ed Brush", a 1964 collage using envelopes with the name ED BRUSH
stamped at the top. Is this a pun on an artwork being made with a
“brush”? The bold typeface anticipates the graphic Pop work of Ed
Ruscha, whose career was beginning at the time in Los Angeles. What is
also of note is the contrast between the rubber stamp headline ED BRUSH
and the cursive script on the envelopes. The mystery of Mr. Brush is
compounded by the fact that he is addressed in both envelopes but in
care of two different people: Mr. Johnson and a Mr. Kreider!

Johnson died in 1995, at the age of 68. But more than 70 years since
he began his brand of art-making, these personal miniature masterpieces
still have enormous power and remain intriguing and provocative works of
art. On the website for his estate, one reads, “His works reflect his
encyclopedic erudition, his promiscuous range of interests, and an
uncanny proto-Google ability to discover connections between a myriad of
images, facts, and people.”
Essay by Michael Klein

In the present work, Ray Johnson predates On Kawara in the conceptual
use of showing only written numbers as Number Art /Word Art. Johnson's
work elevated "Idea over Object" in his art, where the concept of
measurement replaces visual imagery.
Ray Johnson, 1959. Untitled,
Measurement Collage with measurements of the collaged board written by
Johnson. Piece measures 3 1/2 x 5 1/4 in. It is a breakthrough
conceptual work executed in a minimalist way, with a monochrome
red-crayon structure on cut black cardboard.
Framed under glass, it
measures 10 x 10 1/2 in. In this instance, the frame is an integral part
of the artwork; consider the frame size to be the artwork's size.
Reverse bears Buecker & Harpsichords stamp and handwritten “Ray
Johnson Mar. 1959.”
Overall good condition - black board has wear commensurate with age and has been reaffixed to support surface