Ray Johnson

Ray Johnson (1927-95) was a seminal Pop artist, a proto-conceptualist and a pioneer of mail art.Always one to throw sand in the gears of art-world institutions, he tended to circulate his work either in truly alternative spaces (like sticking up out of the uneven floorboards of a warehouse downtown) or through the US Postal Service. Throughout his life, Johnson sent collages, drawings and less easily categorized forms of printed matter to friends, colleagues and strangers. Already in 1965, Grace Glueck described Johnson as «New York's most famous unknown artist.»