Visual art
Ray Johnson
1927–1995 · collage and mail artist
Detroit-born collagist and pioneer of mail art, a forerunner of Pop art often called New York's most famous unknown artist.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Sag Harbor, New York
aged 67- Birth name
- Raymond Edward Johnson
- Detroit years
- 1927–1945
- Field
- Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Johnson was born in Detroit in 1927 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood. He studied advertising art at Cass Technical High School, took weekly classes at the Detroit Institute of Arts and spent a summer drawing at the Ox-Bow school in Saugatuck, Michigan. In 1945, right after high school, he left Detroit for Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied with Josef Albers alongside John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg. Settling in New York in 1949, he began making small collages from fragments of popular culture, such as Lucky Strike logos and fan-magazine images of Elvis Presley, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, work that anticipated Andy Warhol's Pop art. He then turned the mail into a medium, founding the New York Correspondence School, a network of artists who sent each other drawings, collages and instructions. Elusive and prolific, he died in 1995 near his Long Island home.
Highlights
- Studied advertising art at Cass Technical High School
- Took weekly classes at the Detroit Institute of Arts
- Founded the New York Correspondence School of mail art
- His celebrity collages of the 1950s anticipated Pop art
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1941–1945
Cass Technical High School
Where he studied advertising art; the building he attended was replaced by a new one and demolished in 2011.
Studied here · 1940s
Detroit Institute of Arts (Friday Night Live!)
Where he took weekly art classes as a teenager.