Mail Art

Although increasingly appreciated in fine art and stamp collecting circles, artist postage stamps, or artistamps, are more likely to be traded between the people who create them than they are to be exhibited in commercial art galleries or read about in philatelic journals. Artistamps are part and parcel of the grassroots network known as Mail Art, an alternative art of creative long-distance communication that intuited the demand for cross-cultural exchange long before the Internet. Although seemingly rigid, the postage stamp format allows flexible approaches in painting, watercolor, offset, photography, photocopy, rubber-stamping, engraving, digitization and sculpture.

This volume presents an overview of the social history of modern and contemporary Latin American and Latino art. This collection of thirty-three essays focuses on Latin American artists throughout Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The author provides a chronology of modern Latin American art; a history of "social art history" in the United States; and synopses of recent theoretical and historical writings by major scholars from Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, and the United States. In her essays, she discusses a vast array of topics including: the influence of the Mexican muralists on the American continent; the political and artistic significance of poster art and printmaking in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and among Chicanos; the role of women artists such as Guatemalan painter Isabel Ruiz; and the increasingly important role of politics and multinational businesses in the art world of the 1970s and 1980s. She explores the reception of Latin American and Latino art in the United States, focusing on major historical exhibits as well as on exhibits by artists such as Chilean Alfredo Jaar and Argentinean Leandro Katz. Finally, she examines the significance of nationalist and ethnic themes in Latin American and Latino art.

"This book looks at the combination of art, creativity and expression through the use and combination of computer science, and how technology can be used creatively for self expression using different approaches"--Provided by publisher.

Collaging Information: The Artist, the Librarian, the Artist/Librarian Several years after becoming a professional librarian in 1972, I became involved in Mail Art. This international network of cooperating artists has expanded my vision of both the world and the profession. Over the years, I have taken it upon myself to document various aspects of Mail Art, which would have remained unexamined without the involvement of someone both actively participating in the medium and in possession of professional research skills. In so doing, I have been able to integrate two important facets of my life.

Conceptualism played a different role in Latin American art during the 1960s and 1970s than in Europe and the United States, where conceptualist artists predominantly sought to challenge the primacy of the art object and art institutions, as well as the commercialization of art. Latin American artists turned to conceptualism as a vehicle for radically questioning the very nature of art itself, as well as art's role in responding to societal needs and crises in conjunction with politics, poetry, and pedagogy. Because of this distinctive agenda, Latin American conceptualism must be viewed and understood in its own right, not as a derivative of Euroamerican models. In this book, one of Latin America's foremost conceptualist artists, Luis Camnitzer, offers a firsthand account of conceptualism in Latin American art. Placing the evolution of conceptualism within the history Latin America, he explores conceptualism as a strategy, rather than a style, in Latin American culture. He shows how the roots of conceptualism reach back to the early nineteenth century in the work of Símon Rodríguez, Símon Bolívar's tutor. Camnitzer then follows conceptualism to the point where art crossed into politics, as with the Argentinian group Tucumán arde in 1968, and where politics crossed into art, as with the Tupamaro movement in Uruguay during the 1960s and early 1970s. Camnitzer concludes by investigating how, after 1970, conceptualist manifestations returned to the fold of more conventional art and describes some of the consequences that followed when art evolved from being a political tool to become what is known as "political art."

In art making, materials and media are the intermediaries between private ideas, thoughts and feelings, and their external manifestation in a tangible, sensual form. Thus, materials provide the core components of the exchange that occurs between art therapists and clients. This book focuses on the sensory-based, tangible vocabulary of materials and media and its relevance to art therapy. It provides a historical account of the theory and use of materials and media in art therapy, as well as an examination of the interface between art therapy, contemporary art materials and practices, and social/critical theory. Contributing authors provide examples of how art therapists have transgressed conventional material boundaries and expanded both thinking and practice in the field. The chapters discuss traditional as well as innovative media, such as body adornments, mail and video art, and comic books. An accompanying DVD contains media clips, as well as 69 color images.

“What is a good mail day?” A good mail day is a day when, instead of just bills, catalogs, and advertisements, your postal carrier delivers artful, beautiful, personal mail from friends and acquaintances all over the world. Mail art is a collaborative art form with a long and fascinating history populated by famous artists as well as everyday practitioners. The term “mail art” refers to pieces of art sent through the mail rather than displayed or sold in traditional venues. Mail artists often use inexpensive and recycled materials including postcards, collage, rubber stamps, and photocopied images. Mail art is a truly international activity and a fun way to connect with people in every corner of the globe. Readers will learn to create decorated and illustrated envelopes, faux postage and artistamps, find penpals, make a mail art kit, and much more!

Networking means to create nets of relations, where the publisher and the reader, the artist and the audience, act on the same level. The book is a first tentative reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy, through an analysis of media and art projects which during the past twenty years have given way to a creative, shared and aware use of technologies, from video to computers, contributing to the creation of Italian hacker communities. The Italian network proposes a form of critical information, disseminated through independent and collective projects where the idea of freedom of expression is a central theme. In Italy, thanks to the alternative use of Internet, during the past twenty years a vast national network of people who share political, cultural and artistic views has been formed. The book describes the evolution of the Italian hacktivism and net culture from the 1980s till today. It builds a reflection on the new role of the artist and author who becomes a networker, operating in collective nets, reconnecting to Neoavant-garde practices of the 1960s (first and foremost Fluxus), but also Mail Art, Neoism and Luther Blissett. A path which began in BBSes, alternative web platforms spread in Italy through the 1980s even before the Internet even existed, and then moved on to Hackmeetings, to Telestreet and networking art by different artists such as 0100101110101101.ORG, [epidemiC], Jaromil, Giacomo Verde, Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, Correnti Magnetiche, Candida TV, Tommaso Tozzi, Federico Bucalossi, Massimo Contrasto, Mariano Equizzi, Pigreca, Molleindustria, Guerriglia Marketing, Sexyshock, Phag Off and many others.