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> Held Jr., John (U.S.A.) / John Held Jr. (2 April 1947) - rubberstamp and artistamp artist, performer, archivist, researcher, writer - born as Jonathan Held, is since the early eighties main researcher of Mail-Art. When he came of age as an artist he took the name of John Held Jr., a cartoonist in the 1920's who originated the look of the "flapper girl" and considered as one of America's great illustrators. The cartoonist produced covers for Life and The New Yorker and for a book by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Many other Mail-artists had pseudonyms, so Held Jr. (the Mail-artist) liked the fact it was confusing to people. Many of his early correspondents thought he was ninety year old, or his son. For him it was dada and a tribute to the original John Held Jr., even though he had passed away and his wife didn't appreciate it. His acquaintance with Mail-Art was in 1975, when Held Jr. made his first trip through Europe visiting France, Italy, Greece, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands he came by chance across the rubberstamp store 'Posthumus Rubber Stamps' from T. A. Van der Plaats (the Netherlands), where they sold sets of visual rubberstamps of flowers, animals, fairy tales, … When he returned to New York he began to use them in his artwork, with the idea that he discovered a new art medium. But as a professional librarian he began to research if this was true or not. Later he saw an article in the New York Times newspaper about the 'Bizarro Rubber Stamp Company' who published a catalogue of visual rubberstamps. After he wrote to the director Kenn Spicer (U.S.A.), who informed Held Jr. that there was an underground art form called Mail-Art, and that they used rubberstamps to decorate envelopes. Held Jr. was given the names of two New York artists, namely Ray Johnson (U.S.A.) and Edward Plunkett (U.S.A.) who were involved in this work. Soon rubberstamp art became the main interest in his artworks and he accumulated more rubberstamps. In later years Held Jr. designed his own rubberstamps and uses them to decorate his mailings. Johnson who is seen as the founding father of Mail-Art, sent Held Jr. photocopied works with the instruction "add and send to" other artists who he did not know. Plunkett was also directly involved in the early years of Mail-Art as he gave the name 'The New York Correspondance School of Art' in 1962 to the artistic correspondence activities of Johnson. He sent dada-like "free tickets" to Held Jr. that were rubberstamped with odd names and images. The artists to who Held Jr. had to pass the "add and send to" sheets turned out to be members of the 'The New York Correspondance School of Art' among them were Anna Banana (Canada) and Richard C. (U.S.A.). But it was with Johnson himself that he had a large correspondence, who gave him addresses and who introduced him to other artists. A bit more research, experience, and continuing interest, lead him to Jean Brown (U.S.A.) and her archive of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Mail-Art. In 1976 he returned to Amsterdam to have the first exhibition at the 'Stempelplaats Gallery' which Van der Plaats started with the encouragement of Held Jr. and Ulises Carrión (the Netherlands). In his early days in Mail-Art Jean Brown and Carrión were his great mentors.
Over the years, Held Jr. was not only active as an artist but mainly as a bibliographer and researcher of Mail-Art. It is a combination of his interest in Mail-Art with his professional life as librarian. Mail-Art is for him the perfect alternative to the art-market, the perfect blend of art and life, and a logical step in 20th century avant-garde. He obtained a degree in literature first and then a 'Masters of Library Science', he worked in several public libraries in New York State before moving to Texas and taking a position at the 'Dallas Public Library' from 1981-1995. In 1982, Held Jr. opened his 'Modern Realism Gallery and Archive' together with his future wife Paula Barber. The gallery is named after a rubberstamp he found at the library, warning adults that the book their child is reading may deal with provocative themes as sex, drugs, and rock music. The intention was to exhibit in his new hometown the experimental arts he was interested in. At first the location was the smallest building in downtown Dallas, two years later it moved to the hallway of their residence. Beside exhibitions of the artistamps of Anna Banana, photocopy art, artists' books, … they made the first exhibition of Ray Johnson's Mail-Art, and curated performances of Jupitter-Larsen (Canada), Istvan Kantor (Canada) and others. The galley was successful, as in Texas they were the only gallery who showed this kind of art. They received lots of press and the gallery is listed since 1982 in a detailed list of the magazine Art in America. When Held Jr. moved to San Francisco in 1995, the gallery did found a home in a room underneath his house. From the 'Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry', located in Miami Beach, Florida, he received funds to renovate the storage space where his 'Modern Realism Archive' is presently housed. They admire Jean Brown and are one of the few who are seeking Mail-Art for their collection. At the moment the gallery opens only by appointments, official events, when Mail-artists visit or for a party for the Bay Area Mail-Art community. His archive is composed of all the Mail-Art he has received since he began in the field. Over the years he also bought reference materials, and added donations from other Mail-artists. And in the process of his many travels to meet Mail-artists over the years, he has accumulated additional materials. Due to lack of space, he decided later to arrange his archive for other institutions to preserve the materials. Thus from the mid nineties on cataloguing and annotating the Mail Art periodicals in his collection took lots of his time. Before he gives the material to institutions, it is catalogued so that the institution will have some art historical context for the material and that it can become a source of research for future scholars interested in Mail Art. In 2000, he was asked by his friend the West Coast Director of the 'Archives of American Art' to donate his correspondence to the 'Smithsonian Institution', Washington D. C. This resulted in a collection of 267 artists from forty-six countries, and some five-thousand letters, postcards and loose notes from persons related to twenty years of involvement. Held Jr. put together a collection of Mail-Art exhibition documentation, including about 1595 invitations and 1263 catalogues, posters and invitation lists from fifty-four countries and 1700 Mail-Art exhibitions in the 'Getty Research Library' in Los Angeles, California. A year later in 2002 over 3711 Mail-Art periodicals were placed in the 'Museum of Modern Art', New York and resulted in an inventory of six hundred pages of about 655 titles from thirty four countries from Mail-Art publications between 1972 till 2001. In the year 2004, Held Jr. was assembling and cataloguing a collection of artistamps, this collection called 'The World Artistamp Collection' will be offered to a major art institution at the conclusion of the project. The present collection includes some 3,560 sheets of stamps by 450 artists from over thirty-five countries, a supporting reference library contains exhibition documentation and writings on the field. He finances his research by placing collections in art institutions. Held Jr. does not sell or put a value on single items of Mail-Art, but asks for financial support to document the whole collection. This finances the storage space for his Mail-Art archive and his future research.
All those years Held Jr. used his archive for his writings, and the book Mail Art: An Annotated Bibliography about publications in 1991. This book lists over more then two thousand sources of information, on the cover a carving is re-produced by Julie Hagan Bloch (U.S.A.). 'The World Artistamp Collection' shows his specific interest in artistamps, which he started to make himself around 1985. First he used a perforator from a print shop located in a reconstructed old village, called 'Old City Park' in Dallas. Later he received a perforator as wedding present, which is still in use today. Since then he has done over two hundred artistamp sheets, at first mostly of images he found in the network which he called International Cooperative Artists' Postage Stamps, later from collages. In his International Cooperative Artists' Postage Stamps Held Jr. used images received from his correspondents, many of them who were not able to create their own artistamps. These artistamps document relationships developed by involvement in the Mail-Art network and also his various interests such as the 'Decentralized Mail Art Congress' of 1986 and his travels. Most recently, Held Jr. worked with Mike Dickau (U.S.A.) in the creation of a series of thirty prints called Back to the Russian Futurists. For these series Held Jr. created collages using images and portraiture of the pre-revolutionary Russian avant-garde, Dickau scanned, colourised and modified them. Copies of the prints were turned into artistamp sheets. For Held Jr. this project is another example of "the blend of art and life, the insertion of art into alternative environments to that of a commercial system, an art based on friendship and co-operation rather than competition and consumption". Which he sees as a continuation of the concerns arising in the pre-Revolutionary Russian avant-garde. From this art period Held Jr. assembled a collection of books, showing his interest beside the Mail-Art network in all kind of arts where communication and co-operation is a primary concern. The artistamp sheets were later shown at an exhibition curated by Gik Juri (Russia) at the 'Mayakovsky Museum' in Moscow, Russia in 2003. Since 1986, performance art joined his artistic activities, his first performance was called 'A letter opening event', where he opened his sealed Mail-Art on stage in front of an audience. From that moment he has done several performances world-wide, several in collaboration with other Mail-artists. His philosophy on performance art is that if you need to rehearse it then it is theatre, he needs no rehearsal but just an "actualised concept"-performance. Several of his performance he has repeated on several occasions such as the 'Shadow Performance', a performance created for an event in Hiroshima, Japan in 1988, done also in Uruguay, Yugoslavia and Belgium. 'Rubber Stamp Performances' and the 'Fake Picabia Brothers' were other performances. The 'Fake Picabia Brothers' started two years before he moved to San Francisco and was a project together with Bill Gaglione (U.S.A.) aka. Picasso Gaglione. The name referred to the days of 'Bay Area Dada', when Gaglione performed with Robert Rocola (U.S.A.) as the 'Day-Glo Dago Brothers' and other variations on the name. Held Jr. and Gaglione were both inspired by the dadaist Marcel Duchamp, but when they believed he had became too popular by the art public, so they chose Picabia as their pseudonym because of his relative obscurity. Their first performance was in June 1993. For later performances they continued to use the name. Other Mail-artists took variations on the name for their own use, thus creating a situation of a kind of 'multiple name'. Honoria (U.S.A.) and her friend Miss Ruby (U.S.A.) used the name 'The Fake Picabia Sisters' and, Peter Küstermann (Germany) and Dawn Redwood (United Kingdom) performed in drag together as 'The Fake Picabia Transisters'. In 1995 Held Jr. moved to San Francisco and became curator at the 'Stamp Art Gallery' directed by Gaglione, a little shop and exhibition space devoted to the rubberstamp. When Gaglione saw earlier some artworks from artistamp artists at a rubberstamp convention in Seattle, he decided that artistamps should also be exhibited with rubberstamps. He asked artists to do artistamp exhibitions at his shop gallery and when Held Jr. moved to San Francisco, Held Jr. started to organise about two or three exhibitions a month and made artistamp editions to document their exhibitions. For most of the shows, catalogues were available for which Held Jr. did the writing, while Gaglione did the design of the publications. They have published about thirty catalogues in very limited editions, among them about Yves Klein's (U.S.A.) Blue Stamp from 1957, Arman's (France) rubberstamp art of the 1950's, Robert Watt's (U.S.A.) stamp sheets, Andrej Tisma (Yugoslavia) and other Yugoslavian networkers, Michael B. Corbett (U.S.A), Paulo Bruscky (Brasil), Guglielmo Achille Cavellini (Italy) and Ken Friedman (U.S.A.). They also produced a number of limited edition box sets of rubberstamps with artworks from Mail-Art and Fluxus. Arman for example gave them some original drawings from which they made rubberstamps, also sets were made commemorating George Macunias (U.S.A.), May Wilson (U.S.A.), Robin Crozier (United Kingdom) and other artists as Andrej Tisma, Ken Friedman, Michael B. Corbett, Endre Tot (Hungary) and Luc Fierens (Belgium), artists who influenced their own activities. Artistamp portfolios have been made for E.F. Higgins (U.S.A.), Donald Evans (U.S.A.) and Harley (U.S.A.). With their work Held Jr. and Gaglione went to New York City for an exhibition at 'Printed Matter' bookstore, one of the leading artist book stores in the world. Beside all these publications they organised also performances of classic Fluxus works by artists like Dick Higgins (U.S.A.), Alison Knowles (U.S.A.), Ben Vautier (France) and Robert Watts as part of the gallery's 'Fluxfest 96'. They also organised master classes on making zines by Seth Friedman (U.S.A.), eraser carving by Mick Mather (U.S.A.) and Held Jr. himself about rubberstamp publications. In 1997 the shop closed due to financial problems of the parent company. Travelling is for Held Jr. an important part of his networking. He has been to Europe many times and met Mail-artists in their own homes in Japan, Belgium, Germany, South Korea, the former U.S.S.R., Russia, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile Yugoslavia and Cuba. "I always return home better informed, more aware, of the greater world. This has an influence to my future networking activities." During all these travels he gets the opportunity to realise several performances, exhibitions and lectures.
John Held Jr.'s list of publications is long. Beside his Mail Art: An Annotated Bibliography, he has written also for AAA Editions from Vittore Baroni (Italy) the book Rubber stamp art/Arte del timbro published in 2000. Some of the articles Held Jr. wrote for ND magazine from daniel Plunkett (U.S.A.) include, "International Mail-Art Symposium in the USSR" (issue 14, 1991), "Interview with Al Ackerman" (issue 15, 1991), "Crossing the Cactus Curtain: Politics and Isolation Test the Commitment of Latin American Artists" (issue 16, 1992), "Picasso of the Underground: Bill Gaglione Flutters on the Margins of the Artworld Helping to Create a Thriving Alternative Culture" (issue 18, 1994), and "Interview with Allan Kaprow" (issue 19, 1995). For Factsheet Five a magazine of Seth Friedman (U.S.A.) he made reviews of zines but also wrote several articles as "From Dada to DIY: The Rise of the Alternative Arts". Beside reviewing for Factsheet Five, he publishes his own irregular review zine called Bibliozine, in connection with his research on international networker culture, such as zines, Mail-Art, artists's books, electronic communications, performance art, artist collectives, artistamps, rubberstamps, Fluxus, and other aspects of collaborative avant-garde cultures and the individuals associated with them. Held Jr. started Bibliozine in June 1992 and around June 2002 there were sixty-nine issues already published. For his research he has also done interviews with John Cage (U.S.A.) and Ray Johnson in 1977. He has not only written about Mail-Art, but has lectured in 1993 at the 'Victoria & Albert Museum' in London. And at the 'Palace of Fine Arts' in Havana in 1995, where he also curated a Mail-Art show. He organised an exhibition on artistamps called the 'Faux Post' that travelled the United States for two years. Starting with his first exhibition called 'Stampworks', at 'Stempelplaats Gallery' at Amsterdam in 1976, he has curated exhibitions in several fields (artistamps, rubberstamps and publications), beside his personal exhibitions for which he has produced several artistamps and other visual works. Held Jr. has done over twenty other exhibitions all over the world in such countries as Belgium, Japan, Italy, Yugoslavia, the former U.S.S.R., Argentina, Uruguay, Estonia, Georgia, Russia, etc. Beside his artistamp exhibition at the 'Mayakovsky Museum' curated by Juri Gik and John Held, Jr, they featured a retrospective of postage stamps and rubberstamps used in Held's Mail-Art activities over the past twenty years at 'The Anton Chekhov Museum of Letters', a former post office supported by the famous playwright. He helped also in the 'L'art du tampon' exhibition in Paris, an exhibition about stamp art. Held Jr. organised an exhibition about the 'Bay Area Dada Group', 'Before Punk and Zines: Bay Area Dada, 1972-1984', which was shown at the 'San Francisco Public Main Library' and 'Printed Matter', New York City in 1999. Related Topics: References: Date last update: 14 August 2004 |
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