Mail art began with Nietzsche.
How, you might ask, did a modern day movement of crafty folks mailing custom-made envelopes, postcards, and collages, begin with a dead German philosopher? Well, as you probably know, Nietzsche is the philosophic mind behind nihilism. Nietzsche said that life is purposeless, values meaningless, and knowledge worthless. He's the one who proclaimed that "God is dead" and "Nihilism is - not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plough; one destroys."
Around the time of WWI, a few years after Nietzsche's death, some disillusioned and possibly depressed European artists channeled nihilism into art. These artists were known as Dadaists. The Dadaists elevated absurd objects into pieces of art for the sake of sacrilege. They destroyed art in an attempt to express the helplessness of modern life and a massive, meaningless war.
And now we come to mail art and the mail art exhibit right here in Baltimore: Ray Johnson, the founder of mail art, started mail art by creating pictures of mutated bunnies and asking friends to add their own mutations to the bunny. The bunnies were indices for Johnson's mood and parodies for paint-by-numbers type art. Like Dadaism, Johnson's mail art pieces were bizarre parodies of modern life. Inspired by Johnson's exhibitions and mail art networks, the Creative Alliance on Eastern Ave. has opened a mail art exhibit called "Phoenix Rising." "Reverend" Paul (of the Church of SubGenius, a weirdly wonderful bogus cult of "macho irony") came up with the concept. A mail artist himself, he sent out postcards with requests that the recipients respond with their own creations. And so "Phoenix Rising" was born.
Some of the mail art in the Creative Alliance exhibit remains true to mail art's Dada roots, while some are just enjoyable craft pieces. The Dadaist pieces are the most intriguing. While mail art is random and odd by definition, the Dadaist pieces are the most random and odd. Some pieces are verbal-visual puns and others are just cryptic and nonsensical. One verbal-visual pun came in an envelope decorated with an egg-shaped piece of white paper. The package read, "Are you eggstremely eggcited to open this eggcelent parcel?" Inside the parcel were Easter grass, an egg, and a card which read: "I'm a real hard-boiled egg. Eat me if you dare. If I start to smell beware. Just think of what I symbolize to you." Another Dadaistic piece is a letter with Warhol-like repeats of an image. The image is a man's profile superimposed with an ape's profile. At the top, it reads, "I always use animal brain." You can either laugh or cock your head sideways and move on.
Other Dada-like pieces are just weird messages. There's a collage with splatters of cerulean blue and lizards scurrying about. A chameleon says, "Mail art dead? You're joking like an extinct dinosaur with a hangover!" Another piece is a shoebox containing miniature environment of dirt, moss, leaves and bark. The shoebox flap contains puzzling messages like "we were inventing determination and you thought it was only the chaos of the firecrackers."
Some pieces were probably created just to stump the hard-working folks at the post office. These head-scratching-inducing pieces include an envelope jammed with 37 one-cent stamps and a stamped bone. Other pieces are created just for the joy of creating mail art. The best such piece consists of 20 hand-made postcards. When pieced together, the postcards form a chaotic dream-vision of a city. It's a city of destruction, dancing, neon, and naked giants.
The mail art exhibit is quite global. Some return addresses read the Netherlands, Brazil, France, Germany, Poland, Columbia and the Czech Republic. And for some reason, a good fraction of all the mail art was from Italy.
All of this is housed at Creative Alliance at the Patterson. The Creative Alliance, according to Jed Dodds, its artistic director, is a "multipurpose arts center." The Patterson is a spacious, almost cavernous space. This space is devoted to exhibits by local artists, performances, screenings, and workshops. Although it's a good drive away, the Creative Alliance at the Patterson is definitely worth checking out.
The mail art exhibit is located on the upstairs loft. Mail art is tacked to every accessible surface, and envelopes and postcards are hung on clotheslines strung across the room. The display follows no order and the sheer volume and frenetic energy of the collection can be overwhelming.
But hurry to go see "Phoenix Rising" to contemplate and enjoy the sheer weirdness of some people, and because it will soon be gone.
