Community Info
Community InformationBelow is information about the "Artistamps" community on LiveJournal. To join this community, click here. You may leave the community at any time.
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| User: | artistamps (8497925) Think Small!
Artistamps |
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| Name: | Artistamps | |
| Location: | Melbourne, Vic, Australia | |
| About: | This community is for those who are interested in artistamps - artists, creators, collectors, the idly curious. It's a forum to display your work or items from your collection, to arrange trades, to offer items for sale, to commission artistamps, to offer tips, to ask questions and to have fun. A few things to note: - As in any artistic community, copyright applies and should be assumed, regardless of whether this is implicitly stated or not. - This community is for artistamps specifically, not cinderella stamps [usually known as poster stamps in the US] generally. All artistamps are cinderella stamps [although there is some controversy over that]; not all cinderella stamps are artistamps. - Anonymous comments are enabled, but will be screened before release. - Offering artistamps for sale, or linking to sites or auctions for that purpose, is allowed providing there is an illustration of the artistamp either in the post or directly viewable from the link. - Spam will not be tolerated, and will be reported to the LJ Abuse team. Ultimate jurisdiction regarding what constitutes spam rests with the moderator. If you're not sure, don't post it. - Play nice, and have fun! - Moderator = ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} the_phred The first artist to produce a "artist's stamp" - using the [postage] stamp form as an artistic medium - is open to interpretation. Fine artists were certainly commissioned to create poster stamps (advertisements in stamp form) from the late 1800s, but, despite the fact that these spawned a collecting craze that lasted for decades, none appear to have worked with the format outside the commercial context. In 1919, Dadaist Raoul Hausmann affixed a self-portrait postage stamp to a postcard; but given Dada was determinedly anti-art (at least in theory), can this really be counted? German artist Karl Schwesig, while a political prisoner during WWII, drew a series of pseudo-stamps on the blank, perforated margins of postage stamp sheets with coloured inks. This 1941 series, which illustrated life in a concentration camp, has been claimed by Jas Felter, curator of several exhibitions of the form, as the first true artist's stamp. Robert Watts, a member of the Fluxus group, became the first artist to create a full sheet of [faux] postage stamps within a fine art context when he produced a perforated block of 15 stamps combining popular and erotic imagery in 1961. In the early '70s, Ray Johnson - associated with both the Pop Art and Fluxus movements, but tied to neither - founded the International Mail Art Network, an informal association of artists worldwide. The mail art movement was a reaction against the "parasitical structure of the art world", allowing artists to communicate/collaborate directly with each other by cutting out the entire collector-gallery-museum-critic-academic cycle that so represented "the arts establishment" of the 1960s and '70s. Ironic, then, that the 1970s saw several exhibitions of mail art. Multimedia artist Jas Felter curated an exhibition called Artists' Stamps and Stamp Images at Simon Fraser [University] Gallery, Canada, in 1974: the first exhibition to acknowledge the "stamp" as an artistic medium. This collection, which toured Europe and America for the next ten years, led to an explosion in the number of artists using stamps as artistic expression. Canadian multimedia artist and philatelist T Michael Bidner, who made his life's work the cataloguing of all known artist's stamps, coined the word "artistamp" in 1982. It quickly became the term of choice amongst mail artists. In 1989 Felter curated the first of three International Biannual Exhibitions of Artistamps at Davidson Galleries in Seattle. Despite the exhibitions, history, number of artists and global sweep of the artistamp movement, the concept is ignored by major institutions and derided by the arts establishment: before his death in 1989, Bidner attempted to donate his collection to several major Canadian institutions. To his shocked disgust, he was turned down by every one. It eventually went to Artpool, an art research centre in Budapest, Hungary. Artistamps have been produced, often in signed limited editions, as multiples of one design per sheet; a multitude of designs per page; as miniature sheets with a decorative or inclusive border; or any combination/size/shape the artists dream up. For the collector, artistamps can be purchased via the internet, either through on-line auctions or direct from artists or other collectors. For artists who wish to produce their own artistamps, the computer is a godsend: cheap colour printing, in small or large runs, is ideally suited to artistamp production. It's no coincidence that the early '70s explosion in artistamp creation coincided with the development of colour photocopiers. The concept is also particularly suited to other forms of printmaking: lithography, engraving, serigraphy, etching, offset and letterpress have all been used; as too have drawing, watercolour, collage and rubber stamps. The rise of the internet has seen the development of a new concept in artistamps: cyberstamps designed specifically to be viewed on-line (often sent with e-mails) and never intended to be printed. Cyberstamps also allow the use of animated imagery. Artists who regularly use the medium often create them for their own imaginary "postal administrations", and their subjects reflect personal interests, from the political through the fantastic. For collecting or creating, artistamps are ideally suited to those with limited funds, or whose interests lie in subverting the dominant paradigm. This is an edited version of an essay by the_phred published in Artary Volume 1, Issue 4, Spring 2004 | |
| Interests: | 52: art, artist stamps, artist's stamps, artistamps, artists, causes, cinderella stamps, collecting, collections, collectors, cyber art, cyberart, cyberstamps, dada, drawing, engraving, etching, fluxus, fun, gummed paper, hoaxes, imaginary countries, letterpress, limited editions, lithography, mail, mail art, mail exchange, miniature art, miniature sheets, offset printing, painting, paper, perforations, post, postal services, poster stamps, printing, printmaking, prints, promotion, publicity, rouletting, rubber stamps, self-adhesive art, self-promotion, self-publishing, serigraphy, sewing machines, small presses, stickers, subverting the dominant paradigm | |
| Maintainers: | 1: the_phred | |
| Members: | 11: deretla_skoob, eichdogg, jereeza, limester, ohshitman, princebishop, songtosetmefree, the_phred, tobogatron | |
| Watched by: | 11: deretla_skoob, eichdogg, jereeza, limester, paintgyrl, princebishop, rain7nites, silver_fish, the_phred, tobogatron, tuliphead | |
| Account type: | Basic Account | |
