Mail-Art Books

All about Books and Publications connected to Mail-Art. Add information about books you have or have read.

Follow the link for an album with over 200 mail-art publications. Most are in selective archives and hard to get.

Also there is the Bookstore IUOMA where you can order books to support the hosting of IUOMA on NING as well

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  • Celestino Neto

    Hi Gik, is a species of magazine. E has some projects of Mail Art or Stamp Art, Expositions and some events and everything are published in the Oswald Magazine of the German friend Peter.
  • Celestino Neto

    Dear friends, Gik

    welcome to our big

    MAILART & PERFORMANCE-FESTIVAL
    „LA VIE EN ROSE“
    in Minden/Germany
    31.July – 2. August 2009

    with MAIL ART POST OFFICE in the market square
    and an official festival postage stamp by German post Deutsche Post.
    Our event is part of the citywide mega-event „FOREVER FRIENDS IN EUROPE“
    to celebrate the peace after the famous „Battle of Minden“ 250 years ago.

    Plus performance nights on 2 stages
    plus several exhibitions: „eMANcipation“, „No War in MY City“, and more…
    for details see: http://www.schlacht-bei-minden.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=40&Itemid=64&lang=en

    Free hostel accomodation, or hotel rooms with culture discount.
    Rich meals for 3€.

    Book your travels now yourself!
    Reserve your beds with us!

    Angela + Peter Netmail
    P O Box 2644
    D 32383 Mail Art Mekka Minden
    Germoney Utd
    Mobile 0049 178 761 763 7


    --
    hallo

    vielen dank für die mail.




    mit besten grüßen

    peter küstermann
    vorsitzender des kulturvereins wolkenstein e.V.
    herausgeber des kulturmagazins oswald
    galerist im kulturzentrum BÜZ
    poetry-slammaster im kulturzentrum BÜZ
    mail art mekka minden
    dozent am bildungswerk und forum
    dozent an der bundeswehrfachschule berlin

    postfach 2644
    D 32383 MINDEN
    Germoney Utd.

    mobil 0178 761 763 7
    www.netmailart.de


    mobile 0049 (0)178 - 761 763 7

    www.netmailart.de


  • Celestino Neto

    Wilma.

    Ours that bacana that the Guido friend made, very finds the work of it legal and with certainty illustration something is fascinating I am illustrating a book that my wife wrote and when I to finish already go to start to illustrate others two that it finished to write. E immediately afterwards already I am with plus a task the brother of it am professor of Portuguese Language and am Poet and also want that illustrious the eos poetries stories that it escerve.
  • Ruud Janssen


    As promissed the first 500 members are printed in a book. As hardcopy it is available at:

    http://www.lulu.com/content/7247331

    Details:

    Paperback book €22.99 (205068 kb)

    Download: 1 documents , 205068 KB

    Printed: 305 pages, 20.99 cm x 29.7 cm, perfect binding, white interior paper (55# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (90# weight), full-colour exterior ink

    Description:

    The overview of the first 500 members that joined the IUOMA platform at NING. Al portfolios of the initial members are included and a complete list of names of all these members in order of joining the International Union of mail-Artists from November 2008 till June 2009.

    The digital version of the book will be available for free. A hardcopy version is expensive but maybe worth the investment.
  • RJ - Moderator

    There is a need for theory books on Mail-Art. Should we not just make them?
  • RJ - Moderator

    Hi Wilma,
    A generous offer. If only mail-artists would be willing to write down their stories. For the 20 Year IUOMA I received 5 offers for texts. Only two got in till now. The others seem to be too busy.

    Will people write down their stories?
  • RJ - Moderator

    Great Wilma,
    I think you can write quite a story. I will include it in the 20 years of IUOMA book that will be coming out autumn of this year. Your story will be credited to you off course. Looking foreward to read it.
    best wishes,
    Ruud
  • walterfest

    Hello
    They are Walter, do not speak English and write with the help of a translator, I like the idea of the book, where we write our own experiences and to whom we send?
  • Ruud Janssen

    glad to know that!
  • yves maraux

    "von des mail art zur E mail" DIETER DANIELS in NEUE BILDENDE KUNST - oct 1994- is a very acute topic
  • yves maraux

    glad to know that , yves ! ça doit etre interessant , mais introuvable ! tu devrais faire une copie !
  • Lyucinda

    There are several catalogues issued by the Central Museum of Communications from St.Petersburg. I shall be glad to demonstrate them to you.
  • RJ - Moderator

    The books from Central Museum od Communications from St. Petersburg are not in the collection of the TAM-Archive, so I would be happy to see them.
  • Lyucinda

    Every year since 2004 the museum prepares Christmas exhibitions so called "Mailartissimo". We also issue the catalogues to these exhibitions. And I didn’t find any images of our books in your professional group for books on Mail Art. This is not right. I shall try to improve the situation. I'll be happy to give some new information to your society.
  • TIZIANA BARACCHI

    The book printed for exhibition and meeting, 2009 June 6-7, Venezia, insideoutsideBiennale WORLD PAVILION.
    pages 96, cover, euro 12.

  • yves maraux


    the stamp for the launching of my book UNIVERSATILITY
  • TIZIANA BARACCHI

    It remembers me Ko de Jonge.
    Ciao
    TIZIANA
  • yves maraux

    Comment by yves maraux 1 minute ago Delete Comment la tua memoria non fa difetto, si tratta bene del serie Arte Start + Kodejonge!

    already

    Comment by yves maraux on November 18, 2009 at 11:45am Delete Comment you win : this stamp for my book : UNIVERSATILTé or
    UNIVERSATILITY
    KOdeJoNgE edition . Comment by Gik Juri on November 17, 2009 at 9:26pm Ko de Jonge image at the artistamp by Yves Maraux, as I remember.
  • Lyucinda

    Dear Ruud, if you like them, I shall provide forwarding copies to that TAM Archive.
  • RJ - Moderator

    That would be very much appreciated and make the archive collection completer
  • Lyucinda

    Thank you for your message. It is very nice that you are interested in our catalogues. Please, give me the mail address to forward. The other thing is that I can place some images from the book to the site of the group.
    What do you think is it a good idea? Because I cannot send them to all members?
  • yves maraux

    Le catalogue du INTERNATIONALES ANTI KRIEGMUSEUM 1930 Berlin a été réalisé par Ernst Friedrich par un Mailartcall . ( there is some document about this in my Openfluxus page photos . I collected some other experiment in 19th century mailart , one is related to my participation at Bismark Hallbritter blog
  • RJ - Moderator


    this exhibition?
  • Lyucinda

    A marvelous graphics! I like the poster's manner.
  • Lyucinda

    I have written about these grafics.
  • Ruud Janssen


    Mail received from Lyucinda - A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communication - Russia

    The catalogue Mailartissimo dates from 2004. A wonderful catalogue printed in colour and includes texts in English and Russian. Lots of illustrations, addresses of the participants and historic statements about mail-art from several sources. ISBN 5-9900363-1-0 - 177 pages. To my surprise I find my own name on page 169. Thanks to Gik Juri three of my artistamps sheets were part of the exhibition.
    The package with 9 books arrived in Breda. A donation for the TAM-Archive. I will scan the covers of the books and will publish them here as well for you to see.




    Thanks for this wonderful addition to our collection!
    Labels: A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communication, Konstantin Kalendaroff - Russia, Mail to Ruud Janssen, Netherlands, TAM-Archive
  • Gik Juri

    Yes, it was huge exhibition of artistamps there, half of exposition was in artistamps from my archive!
  • Lyucinda

    Dear Ruud,
    I am very glad to know that you found the own works there. The question is that if you are one of the participants, you should have got this catalogue in 2004. Just after the exhibition we provided mailing them to all artists!?!
  • Ruud Janssen

    In 2005 I moved to Breda. So maybe the catalogue got lost? Glad to have it in the TAM-Archive now.
  • Tulio Restrepo

    Dear Networkers ... Lyucinda, Gik Juri & Ruud Janssen... How to buy the catalog ...? for my archive in Medellín - Colombia...
  • Lyucinda

    The catalogue is on sale in the A.S.Popov Central Museum of Communications. The cost is 450 rub. (about 11 Euro). The way of purchesing you can find on the site http://www.di-imagetel.ru . Please, try, and send me your mail address.
  • Tulio Restrepo

    Dear Lyucinda... Many Thanks for your important information about Mailartissimo...
    I will try to get it in a followings days... I'll let you know through IUOMA network
    My completely Mail Art Network address is.
    Tulio Restrepo
    Zona Postal Mail Art
    A.A. 65.376
    Medellín - Colombia
    e-mail: tulio.restrepo@une.net.co
    Internet: http://www.zona postal.info

    Greetings and all the best for your activity

    Tulio Restrepo
  • Karin Winter

    I would like to purchase one of them too, but could not figure out the website

    Karin Winter
    6717 Akron Road
    Colorado Springs, CO 80923 USA
  • Ruud Janssen





    Three more catalogues. The catalogue is on sale in the A.S.Popov Central Museum of Communications. The way of purchesing you can find on the site http://www.di-imagetel.ru .
  • Ruud Janssen

    The latest exbibition at the Museum:

  • Ruud Janssen

  • Lyucinda

    Dear friends of the group who want to get Mailartissimo catalogues. It is difficult from us. I shall inform you how to buy the catalogues or decide how to forward them to you in the nearest days. Wait for not longer then a week, please.
  • Ruud Janssen

    http://www.oberlin.edu/library/art/mailart/links.html

    The Oberlin University actually give mail-art courses and has this resourcelist online.
  • Lyucinda

    Dear Ruud!
    1. We have printed the new Mailartissimo-2009 catalogue dedicated to the Gergian painter Mikheil Shengelia. I shall send it to you, please, clarify the address.
    2. We decided that all who want to buy all our catalogues, will send a price of the catalogue plus cost of mail via WestPost to Cler Silver (Svetlana Serebryakova), who is the curator of mailart collection in the A.S.Popov central Museum of Communications. And she will buy books and send to the address. The cost of catalogues very soon will be in the museum's sites.
    Best,
    Lyucinda
  • Lyucinda

  • Lyucinda

    Dear colleagues of the MA Book Group, I hope you will find enough information concerning purchasing of the catalogues and postcards:
    http://www.rustelecom-museum.ru/publications/publicationslist.asp?C...

    Dear Ruud, of course, I shall forward the example of the last catalogue to you by mail. I would be very much obliged if you comment briefly: was it interesting for you or not. And you see that our museum has one of the best annual exhibitions of MA in Russia.
  • Lyucinda

    Of course, dear, it can be so.
    But I am sure that MA Books from the A.S.Popov Central Museum of Communications are also very cheep, informative and beautiful.
  • Ruud Janssen

  • Lyucinda

    Do you have a short explanation of mailart?
  • Ruud Janssen

    Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium. The term mail art can refer to an individual message, the medium through which it is sent, or an artistic genre. Mail art is also known as postal art and is sometimes referred to as Correspondence/Mail Art (CMA).

    Mail artists typically exchange ephemera in the form of illustrated letters, zines, rubberstamped, decorated or illustrated envelopes, artist trading cards, postcards, artistamps, faux postage, mail-interviews, naked mail, friendship books, decos, and three-dimensional objects.

    An amorphous international mail art network, involving thousands of participants in over fifty countries, evolved between the 1950s and the 1990s. It was influenced by other movements, including Dada and Fluxus.

    One theme in mail art is that of commerce-free exchange; early mail art was, in part, a snub of gallery art, juried shows, and exclusivity in art. A saying in the mail art movement is "senders receive", meaning that one must not expect mail art to be sent to oneself unless one is also actively participating in the movement.

    Contents [hide]
    1 History
    1.1 Contrast to artist trading cards
    2 Mail art communities
    3 Well-known mail artists
    4 References
    5 External links


    [edit] History
    There is a rich history of creative examples sent through the post. The most familiar example is the illustrations on envelopes carrying first day issue postage stamps, which philatelists refer to as "first day covers", but mail art encompasses other decorated envelopes such as event covers, as well as a wide range of other procedures and media such as rubber stamps and artistamps. Mail art is traditionally, though not always, distinguished from simply "mailed art", which is art that does not truly use the postal service but is simply regular art that is sent through the mail.

    Mail artists claim that mail art began when Cleopatra had herself delivered to Julius Caesar in a rolled-up carpet.[1] However, perhaps the initial genesis of mail art was in postal stationery, from which mail art is now typically distinguished (if not defined in its broadest sense). The first example of postal stationery was the pictorial design created by the English artist William Mulready (1786-1863) for mass printing-press reproduction on the first stock of prepaid postage wrappers or envelopes produced for the launch of the Penny Post in Britain in 1840. Mulready's design was not well received by the public, and various cartoonists and artists produced lampoon versions. However, it was recognized that an innovative and powerful communication adjunct piggybacking on the basic letterpost service had become available, and over the next 50 years or so, millions of pictorial envelopes with a wide variety of motifs and designs were processed by postal services worldwide.

    As an art form, the early genre produced low- and high-minded works ranging from the comic and satirical through commercial and industrial advertising to the promotion of social causes such as fair trade, world peace and brotherhood, and the abolition of slavery. Examples exist of pictorial propaganda envelopes with patriotic motifs produced by both sides during the American Civil War.

    The enthusiastic use of this piggyback medium continued throughout the second half of the 19th century, until postal administrations worldwide began to authorize the use of picture postcards, which were first approved and offered for sale at all post offices in Austria-Hungary on October 1, 1869.

    This was the beginning of the end of the heyday of the pictorial envelope. Producing a card with an illustration on it, whether executed by hand or by a mechanical printing process, is less involved than producing it on an envelope. A card is flat and usually rectangular like a canvas; an envelope starts out flat, but the sheet from which it is formed has to be shaped and then folded. The extra difficulty that producing multiple printed envelopes entails eventually led to the establishment of the commercial envelope printing and overprinting industry, which, like commercial envelope manufacture, is perforce an economy-of-scale activity, which means it is at its most economically efficient when the print run is very long.

    This was the situation prevailing until the advent of digital electronics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The convergence of this technology with telephone technology led to the development of the social-change engine known as the Internet by the early 1990s, so that by the end of the 20th century, it had become increasingly common to find households with a digital computer and a sheet printer. By employing suitable software, the printer could be used to customise machine-made envelopes, each with a unique composition of colorful digitised text and graphics.

    In principle, this meant that even the most graphically challenged could employ the pictorial or illustrated envelope medium and produce a work categorizable as mail art. (However, producing printed envelopes from the sizes of sheet processed by sheet printers does not obviate the tedious cutting out of the appropriate shape (see Envelope manufacture) or the production of awkwardly shaped waste offcuts.As much as 30% of an ISO standard-size A4 sheet can be wasted if producing an ISO standard-size C6 envelope from it). In addition,a machine-made envelope (i.e. a folded and gummed sheet of paper with a loose flap)does not behave like a flat sheet of paper does in a printer. Hence the illustrative content has to be restricted to the front (or face) of the envelope; in contrast a hand-illustrated envelope, even though machine-made, can have illustrative material on the back (or flaps) side

    Standard sizes preferred by the postal authorities are relevant, because some works, whether or not produced with the aid of a computer, might be constructed with postal distribution in mind; others might make use of the postal service to facilitate a collaboration or work of correspondence art between artists.

    [edit] Contrast to artist trading cards
    There are similarities between mail art and artist trading cards (ATCs) as well as a distinctive difference. What is unique about the concept of ATCs is trading, specifically face-to-face trading. If ATCs are sent in the mail, they become yet another variation of CMA, but, once one attends a trading session, "the cards come to life".

    There is no difference in a formal sense between ATCs and CMA—that is, in both cases, they incorporate the full range of art media and disciplines; they are not a formal innovation such as Cubism. Conceptually ATCs are extremely close to CMA; they are both about exchanging art without the interface of the art world and without money being involved. Except for the concept of the trading session, the two activities could be, for all intents and purposes, the same.

    [edit] Mail art communities
    When the electronic telecommunications network known as the Internet gave rise to e-mail art, conventional mail artists came to refer to the international postal service as the paper net or snail-mail net. When a group of these artists are in some way linked through their works, they are collectively referred to as a Mail Art Network. The mail-art community has been referred to as the Eternal Network since the 1980s (or possibly even earlier) and predates the time when access to the Internet became widespread.

    The Mail-Art Network concept has roots in the work of earlier groups, including the Fluxus artists and the notion of multiples, or artworks manufactured as editions. Most commonly, Mail-Art Network artists have made and exchanged postcards, designed custom-made stamps, or artistamps, and designed, decorated or illustrated envelopes. Even large and unwieldy three-dimensional objects have been known to have been sent by Mail-Art Network artists, for many of whom the message and the medium are synonymous.

    Fundamentally, mail art in the context of a Mail Art Network is a form of conceptual art. It is a movement with no membership and no leaders.

    The International Union of Mail Artists (see IUOMA external link) is a group of mail artists individually practicing in several countries. The IUOMA started in 1988 and now has their own online forum. Anyone can join just by saying so; in this way, the group is merely unified conceptually.

    Early online server Prodigy had a large group of artists networking online and through the postal system to create and experience mail art in 1990. Many were hesitant to call themselves artists but were encouraged and educated by arto posto (Dorothy Harris) as they ventured into mail art. Mail artists were among the first to see and use the networking possibilities of the World Wide Web when it appeared in 1992 to bring graphics to the previously text-oriented Internet. At the same time, the Internet offered nothing new to them (as it is certainly not possible to send objects over the Internet without ubiquitous 3D printing). Mail artists, like graffiti and poster artists, often work anonymously or collectively under aliases. Artist trading cards, or ATCs, can also be sent by mail and are actively traded by many mail artists.

    Nervousness.org is an organization of artists who create LMAOs, or Land Mail Art Objects, which are then swapped by post. The Snail Mail World Postcard Art Show in Canada is one of the largest of its kind, drawing in up to 1000 entries each year.

    It is believed that some of the largest mail art projects are:

    Ryosuke Cohen's Brain Cell project, started in 1985. As of 2007, more than 600 issues have been created, with new issues every eight to ten days.
    Robin Crozier's Memo(random)/Memo(ry) project, started in the early 1980s.
    The TAM Rubberstamp Archive by Ruud Janssen, started in 1983, in which he sends out standard sheets to document the use of rubber stamps in the mail-art network.
    Fluxus Bucks started in 1994 by ex posto facto in Garland, Texas, USA. Thousands of Fluxus Bucks are still being collected and circulated with documentation that acts as a networking tool (2006).
    Mail-Art Across the World, a co-associative project between several European countries, proposes to combine the mail-art and classical calligraphy, a natural vector for writing addresses. They offer online galleries, then, after collecting all mail-arts (more than 400 per edition), this exhibition travels in European cities .

    source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_art
  • Lyucinda

    Thank you, very clear and short!:)))
  • Lyucinda

    The way to buy catalogues in the A.S.Popov Central Museum of Communications::
    rustelecom-museum.ru>"publications">catalogues
    You are welcome
  • Lyucinda

    Ruud, I have sent a new catalogue of "Mailartissimo-2009" dedicated to the personal chapter of Michael Shengelia from the exhibition to you. Confirm when receive, please.
  • Ruud Janssen


    Above a reaction to the question of Lyucinda's question.....

    Yes, Lyucinda, will confirm arrival and will document the sending. Thanks so much for keeping the TAM-Archive up-to-date.

    Ruud
  • Ruud Janssen

    Yes, know the book "Correspondence Art". I ordered it when it came out in 1986. Because of the good research they did, the book is valuable, but I remember that some mail-artists were not included in the book because the networks sometimes don't know each other. Lots of interesting details in the book though.