Ray Johnson

The Artist
The Estate of Ray Johnson, New York

A pioneering figure in neo-Dada and Pop Art, Ray Johnson was among the first artists to recognize celebrities and other icons of popular culture as fertile subject matter for his work. His stylistic breakthrough came in the 1950s, with collages employing newsprint images of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and the Lucky Strike cigarette logo.  Often referred to as "New York's most famous unknown artist", Johnson consistently moved among the most influential American artists of the mid-century – studying at Black Mountain College with Josef Albers and Willem De Kooning, and befriending figures like Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol upon his arrival in New York – yet he remained mostly clear of the spotlight that was trained on his vanguard peers.  Following his impulse toward collective art-making, Johnson invented the practice of "mail-art" in the 1960s, through which a collage would be constructed piece by piece as it was sent via post from one artist in Johnson's network to another.  The artist also adopted this accretive process in his solo work, often returning to a collage several times over a series of years, as with two of the present works, after finding new sources of inspiration.  Indeed, Johnson's significant historical contribution to the art of assemblage was made in this conceptual realm, with the premise that the actual "art" was just as much to be found in the art-making process as it was in the final collage itself