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Book of the living
By roberta
November 10, 2009 · 8 Comments
artblog contributor Matthew Rose’s exhibition A Book About Death is in its last week at the Queens Museum. Catch it before it ends Nov. 15.
Rose organized the exhibit/book, in which some 500 artists made a new piece of art about death and produced 500 postcards of their piece. The postcards are what’s on view — either stacked on the floor or pinned to the walls.
The Queens exhibit, which opened Nov. 1, is the second outing for A Book About Death, which debuted at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in New York in September. In the first iteration, the postcards were stacked on the floor and viewers were allowed to choose a selection to make their own personal postcard book about death and take it home with them. At the Queens Museum, a curator has selected individual postcards to hang on the wall and, in special workshops related to the show, viewers can make their own postcard about death.
The exhibit pays tribute to Ray Johnson, collage artist and originator of mail art, and to Emily Harvey, whose Emily Harvey Gallery in the 1980s was dedicated to showing conceptual art by Johnson and New York Fluxus members. The foundation continues to support the arts after Harvey’s death in 2005 from cancer.
Matthew Rose
Rose is himself a collage and mail artist and a printer who runs a small digital press in Paris where he lives. Recently he won a $5,000 prize in an international stamp art competition focused on baseball images. Rose’s winning stamp, “Rubens Rounding Third,” is one he stuck on an envelope and mailed me earlier this year. The faux stamp — which looks pretty real — made it from Paris to Philadelphia with nobody challenging its authenticity. And now it gets a prize!
Matthew's stamp, Rubens Rounding Third. Check it big to see the hand made perforations and the postal cancellation.
Rose organized A Book About Death by reaching out to artist friends, including his 1500+ Facebook friends. That he got 500 artists to participate says much about Rose as a networker, and also shows how much artists a) like the subject of death, and b) like to make postcards (500 postcards cost around $100 or so).
Rose’s postcard for the show/book memorializes his mother Doris, who died shortly before the show opened. Rose is looking to organize more Book about Death shows. Get in touch with him if you’re interested in hosting one.
Postcard from the show. All postcards are viewable at the project's online archive.
Here’s an archive of the project with all the postcards.
Tags: A Book About Death, emily harvey foundation, matthew rose, new york, queens museum
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I am the curator of the exhibition, Selections From A Book About Death, at the Queens Museum of Art. Our exhibition is dedicated to Moki Cherry, Minnie Weinberg and Nancy Spero. There will be a closing party on the 15th from 3 to 6pm.
Hi Louise, thank you for the clarification on who your exhibit is dedicated to. I hope people are participating and enjoying!
Thanks, Roberta. I am still installing cards from the call I sent out.
I’d love to be able to send you a few jpegs from our wonderful installation? If so, let me know how to contact you. Louise
Louise is an art star, art hero and a great friend of this project. She took it upon her own initiative to create yet another version of this show and worked non-stop to get it right. That was always an inherent aspect of A Book About Death – that the artist’s owned this project, this exhibition, an exhibition that was (in its first incarnation at the EHF in NYC) free. You walked in and worked for a bit and then walked out with the entire exhibition. MoMA, among other institutions, now has a complete set of the works. As of now, artists are organizing in Mexico, Montreal, Belgium, São Paulo, Brazil – and I just received a note from China – to put together new variations with community initiatives for this project. Oh..and one artist, Angela Ferrara is putting the finishing touches on a YouTube video showing all the artists’ works in about 9’45 … MR
Matthew’s wonderful show is really an encyclopedia of 21st century mail art. At the original Harvey opening I read about 9/11 and the death of John Cage, Emily Harvey and my mother. It was webcast. Matthew worked on an article about Emily for the Times back when she was very ill. We were in regular correspondence; we read together in Paris, for instance, just as the evil W was re-elected. In any case, the article on Emily appeared. For some reason I thought of the article as her obituary. Some time later I was at a book party for Richard Kostelanetz. On the way out there was Emily and she looked fine. I was stunned. “But Emily,” I said, “I thought you were… I thought you… ” Yes? she said. “In Venice,” I said, and left.
A Book About Death : The Movie…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7nOFqIsSQ0
Hi Roberta: Hope you can get to see my most recent project opening this Sunday, April 10th. Best, Louise
Future Perfect: Re-Constructing the 1939 New York World’s Fair
April 10 – August 14, 2011
Opening Reception
Sunday, April 10, 2011 3:00 to 6:00pm
“To Exhibit Fastest Fighting Plane at New York World’s Fair,” 1938
Vintage gelatin silver print
Gift of Irene Feldman, 2006.14.47WF39
http://www.queensmuseum.org/future-perfect-re-constructing-the-1939-new-york-world%E2%80%99s-fair
thanks for the heads up, Louise! Sounds interesting.