Re: Picasso's mail art

honoria — Mon, 28 May 2001 16:51:48 +0200

The history of other art networks is wonderfully captured in a book called STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: the first american avant garde by Steve Watson. Strange Bedfellows features maps of relationships between various modernist writers and artists of the early 20th century. The maps depict networks of creative people, such as a network around Gertrude Stein that included Picasso. Watson researched the book here in Austin at the Harry Ransom Collection in which a lot of modernist's correspondence is housed. It is wonderful to go to the quiet collection reading room and search for a writer or artist. The librarian will search the archives and bring you a folder of old letters and clippings from artists and writers such as Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp, etc etc etc. It is the most amazing treasure trove of correspondence and trivia...trails left by artists of an energized and interactive era of creation that used the postal systems.

Picasso's mail art

craig purcell — Mon, 28 May 2001 16:17:30 +0200

Undoubtedly Picasso's mail art is worth more than other mail art - so how can mail art be valued monetarily?

"...There is no shortage of surprises, either. Among them are a 1919 postcard from Picasso to Jean Cocteau containing a little drawing that bears a remarkable resemblance to the work of Matisse (or maybe Dufy), and a lovely, curiously sedate painting by George Grosz, a 1927 landscape marking this r?volt? artist?s
withdrawal from the turmoil of Dada politics."

Hilton Kramer
New York Observer
from "Working on C?te d?Azur Was Very Best Revenge"