INTRO - MAIL ART - THE POSTMAN - LINKS - ARTISTAMPS - MAIL ART CALLS
Do you know
postal art? Which we called also mail-art. The goal of this
exercise is to imagine and to create an artistic postal
correspondence, which will have to thwart the post offices in
order to arrive at the right place, the postmark being taken!
It is not enough
any more to put a stamp and an address on a vulgar white envelope.
Postal art opens all the possibilities of composition through the
decoration of this envelope, which becomes a painting with whole
share then. I propose you to discover what perhaps postal art
through my adventures… stamped (crazy)!
It is not
necessary to be a recognized "artist" to take part of
it, even if great names (Matisse, Picasso...) also took pleasure
to decorate their mail. Regarded as "Poor art", using
recovery, the diversion and all the techniques of graphic or
plastic, it was often militant, protestor and voluntary
iconoclastic. It can be also family and friendly.
At this point of
time, where the necessary effectiveness of Internet tends to
impoverish the form with the profit of the speed, it is pleasant
and reassuring to be able, for the simple pleasure to send and
receive, to exchange these mails full with imagination and
freedom, which are as many small gifts entrusted to the good care
of the post office.
Perhaps something
which is essential since we wish to give pleasure by giving
pleasure to ourselves. Not more complicated than that. It’s
just been thrown together out of the Art laws, the mail art, or
postal art, concerns a small intrigue, sometimes exotic,
containing stamps (true and false), adhesive, paper, recycled
advertising, original envelopes, printed or artisan cards,
stickers... Then the post office will have to make this
clandestine art, which generally does not claim any particular
school and which hopes to open out in all marginality, travelling
around the world. This refusal of the institutions, of the art
market and the normative aspect of our society are often
clarified on the sending by the expressions "Not for sale,
No copyright ". It is in the same spirit as of many
invitations to take part in projects of mail art, specifying the
freedom of expression of the participant: "No fee, No jury,
technique and size free" (2). In other words, freedom of
format...
If I had to
define the mail art, I would say that it is a game, a way of life
and a permanent communication.
The mail art has
been a practice used by the poets and artists of the whole planet
for several decades, but it remains always effective, impertinent
and creative.
The mail art is
one of the largest popular artistic practices of the 20th century,
or rather since the post office exists.
The mail-artists are art lovers or simply lovers of originality and of the non-conventional...
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