THE LAST CORRESPONDANCE SHOW ART DEPT. (sic)

Sacramento: California State University, n.d. (1969) A group of publicity materials for this very first mail art exhibition. As early as 1968 Johnson wanted to organised a public show of mail art relating to the New York Correspondance (sic) School but did not know how to go about arranging such a thing and sadly his gallery was not interested in aiding the project since his own work had not sold all that well up to then. When Johnson's friend and participant in the New York Correspondance School Joseph Raffael (aka Joseph Raffaelle), moved to Sacramento, California, to assume a position at the State University, Johnson was afforded the opportunity to put his plan into practice and "The Last Correspondance Show" was held from April 7-30, 1969 at the Art Gallery of California State University. This was the very first public manifestation of correspondence art and doubly important because of Johnson's central role. Here we offer almost all of the relevant publicity material for that show (only a badge issued by Johnson is missing) which incorporate a Ray Johnson design of a double-sided snake and a typographic design for the show's title and information. The group consists of: FARMER'S SPECIAL Exhibition poster - 28 x 21.5cm approx., printed red and black on white and die cut to the shape of a butcher's shop or grocer's arrowed publicity material. ADDED: SEND ALL CORRESPONDENCE BY APRIL 17TH 21.6 x 28cm, 1pp b/w invitation to participants for the show with a large Johnson design of 6 snakes plus text. Slightly browned top left. ADDED: "MARIE-FRANCE MARIAGES" (sic) Invitation card for the show printed black on dark grey card - folded to 4pp to allow mailing. Printed 1 side only. Sent through mail to Robin Crozier the Fluxus artist - with attached address label. The text is a series of spoof marriage announcements in French as if taken from pages in a classified newspaper advert. ADDED: THE LAST CORRESPONDENCE SHOW Small poster 28 x 21.5cm again with a b/w design by Johnson - 32 snakes here. (Most probably a single snake was drawn and the reproduction made mechanically.) Folded with a tiny nick on the top of the poster. (Thanks to John Held Jnr for info on this material.)