Notes Toward a History of Artistamps
John Held Jr.

The first exhibition of artistamps occurred in 1974, when James Warren Felter first identified the field in a show at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., subsequently travelling to additional sites in Geneva, Switzerland, and around the United States and Canada. During the following decade, another Canadian, the late Michael Bidner, coined the word 'artistamps', to signify artist-produced postage stamps, most of which were being produced within the mail art genre. There have been several attempts to define artistamps. Some say that artistamps must be perforated, be of a certain size, produced in multiples (as opposed to original works), or be gummed. But these definitions only tend to limit the field, in which the history of this new medium is being written on an almost daily basis.

During 1996 at the Stamp Art Gallery in San Francisco, Picasso Gaglione and I curated artistamps shows on Yves Klein, Robert Watts, Donald Evans, Harley, E.F. Higgins III, Patricia Tavenner, Carl Chew, May Wilson, Bugpost, Dogfish, and others. Work on these shows, and additional research are uncovering a wealth of new information.

From a recent book, NEW YORK DADA, 1915-23, by Frances M. Naumann, comes the anecdote concerning a suitor of Duchamp, the Baroness Elsa van Freytag-Loringhoven, who has been described as "the first American dada ... she is the only one living anywhere who dresses dada, loves dada, lives dada." (reference 1). She roamed the streets of Greenwich Village from 1918 to 1923 attired in what she called "fanciful artistic clothes." She adorned herself with black lipstick, a birdcage around her neck with a live canary, and was occasionally seen with her shaved head painted purple (to combat ringworm). To the bustle of her dress she attached "an electric battery tail light," and when people inquired why, she answered that "Cars and bicycles have tail lights. Why not I? Also people won't bump into me in the dark." The Baroness had one other eccentricity that earns her a place in the Pantheon of Artistamps, for she stuck postage stamps on her cheeks in lieu of blush, and in doing so initiated the first artist postage stamp performance. Sixty years later, mail artists E.F. Higgins and Buster Cleveland would stand on nearby Soho streets, covered in Cavellini artistamps, further extending the pioneering footsteps of the Baroness Elsa van Freytag-Loringhoven.

While researching a catalogue essay on Yves Klein and the Blue Stamp he affixed to a postcard announcing the 1957 exhibition of his monochrome blue paintings, "Yves Klein: Propositions Monochromes", at the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris, I interviewed Pierre Restany, the theoretician of the Nouveau Realists group, and Sidrah Stich, curator of a recent European travelling exhibition on Klein. But it was not until a meeting with Klein's childhood friend Arman, that I was able to dispel a veil of speculation that surrounds this famed stamp of blue (reference 2). When asked if he knew how the stamps were perforated, Arman answered that he was there at the conception of the idea. Dealer Iris Clert, well connected in political circles, arranged for the stamps to be printed and perforated at the official French postage stamp printing office. This is completely plausible, for Clert would use her connections at a later date so that Klein could conceive his fire paintings at the testing centre of the national gas company. That incident ended in scandal, with the resignation of the director of the centre for allowing Klein to use nude models on the premises. His mailing of the invitation bearing the Blue Stamp was more uneventful. He and Clert simply paid the postal worker on duty to cancel them, paying the clerk the regular price for posting and a tip for his efforts.

Arman also told me he had himself created a sheet of stamps around 1961. If this is so, it is the same year that Robert Watts created his first stamp sheet, which is the earliest one I have seen to date. Although Klein's stamps were produced in sheets, their importance lay on being affixed to his invitation, a perfect complement to the paintings, but for him, none the less in importance. Watts was both a member of the Fluxus art group and a Pop artist, shown at that bastion of Pop, the Leo Castelli Gallery, in 1964. He was a professor for many years at Rutgers University, teaching alongside Alan Kaprow and Roy Lichtenstein. He created money and tablecloths, transforming commonplace consumer items into artworks, forging a closer blend of art and life like many of the downtown artists of the time. In four years, Watts created four stampsheets, culminating in his 1964 'Fluxpost 17/17', which was used for many years in the Fluxkits produced by George Maciunas. This stampsheet combined all the production skills Watts had mastered in his previous efforts. It remains an oft-cited totem of the Fluxus movement (reference 3).

Later in the decade, May Wilson, John Evans, and Patricia Tavenner found a source to have photostamps made from their photographs or collages. May Wilson had a particularly inventive approach to the medium. She made photo booth self-portraits of herself with grimacing, deliberately compromising, facial contortions. Once translated into photostamps, they were affixed to index-card postcards first spraypainted with a geometric stencil design.

Any discussion of artistamps in the 1960s is incomplete without mentioning the work of the late American artist Donald Evans, who died tragically in an Amsterdam house fire at the age of 31 in 1977. He was the ultimate creator of imaginary worlds, focusing his energy on the production of postage stamps for lands awash with fruits and flowers, bird eggs, and farm animals. His watercolor execution of these commemorative stamps was exquisite.
Very little serious exploration of the field has been made. There aren't any doctoral dissertations on artistamps that I'm aware of. The literature of the field is, however, impressive. Catalogues have been produced documenting the artistamp activity over a twenty year period. Reference guides are being continually updated by James Warren Felter (INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORY OF ARTISTAMP CREATORS) and Bugpost, who is compiling THE STANDARD ARTIST STAMP CATALOGUE, a listing of artistamp producers and their issues. Although the ARTISTAMP NEWS is under new editorship, it continues publication. An important artistamp publication has recently ceased to exist due to the untimely death of Joki Mailart of Minden, Germany. His SMILE magazine and other self-published works were one of the finest and most consistent records of the field. His death in 1997 at 54 is deeply regretted by all networking artists.

There have been exhibitions in national museums (Hungary, Switzerland, France), and recently Guy Bleus has issued a CD-ROM of his artistamp collection. Other major archives are found at Artpool in Budapest, the Anna Banana Archives in Sechelt, British Columbia, Chuck Welch's International Register of Artistamps, and my own Modern Realism Archives, which contains over 3,000 stampsheets by 600 artists. Perhaps the largest public collection is at Oberlin College in Ohio, which obtained the artistamp archive of Harley. But almost every artistamp producer maintains his own collection, and there are impressive holdings in many areas of the world. Another recent development in the artistamp field is the appearance of websites that feature the work of artists in this medium. James Felter and Chuck Welch have been leading the way in this area.

As one of the more visual aspects of mail art, artistamps are sure to attract continuing attention. Like the broader field of mail art, knowledge of the field is often limited to active participants, and most of the writing about them has been done by producers of the works. Until they are discovered by a larger audience, it remains the artists' job to keep a record of their activity. These notes are made in the hope that a more full history will someday appear.

References

1) Naumann, Francis M. NEW YORK DADA, 1915-23. Publ. Harry N. Abrams, New York, NY, 1994. Pages 168-175

2) Gaglione, Picasso, and Held Jr, John. MOVING INTO NEARNESS: THE FAKE PICABIA BROS. IN NEW YORK CITY. The Stamp Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 1996.

3) Gaglione, Picasso, and Held Jr, John ROBERT WATTS: ARTISTAMPS 1961-1986. The Stamp Art Gallery. San Francisco, CA, 1996.

John Held Jr., U.S.A..

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