Mail Art

Definition

Mail art (also known as Postal art and Correspondence art) is a populist artistic movement centered around sending small scale works through the postal service.

It initially developed out of the Fluxus movement (anti-commercial) in the 1950s and 60s, though it has since developed into a global movement that continues to the present.

Sometimes, the artists organised exhibitions of the art received without any limitation

The American artist Ray Johnson is considered to be the first mail artist, and the New York Correspondence School that he developed is considered the first self-conscious network of mail artists

Ray Johnson

Correspondence is "a way to convey a message or a kind of idea to someone which is not verbal; it is not a confrontation of two people. It's an object which is opened in privacy, probably, and the message is looked at ... You look at the object and, depending on your degree of interest, it very directly gets across to you what is there ...“ (Ray Johnson)

Nowadays

There are still groups of people who practice mail art

Tecnology has been incorporated to this movement in the part of spreading the art, publishing the pieces in blocs, webs, etc.

The main characteristic now continue being «to be sended by postal mail»

Prison artists

Prison artists

http://memoriesaremadeofthismailart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/from-maribel-sanchez-and-laia-castell.html