Elizabeth Zuba – författare

This gemlike Ray Johnson book celebrates his friendship with writer and logophile William S. Wilson in pictures and wordsA New York Times critics' pick | Best Art Books 2020Dubbed "Ray Johnson's Boswell," writer and logophile William S. Wilson was one of legendary artist Ray Johnson's closest friends and biggest champions. He was also perhaps Johnson’s most trusted poetic muse and synthesizer of referents and references. The influence was mutual: throughout their lifelong friendship, begun when both men were in their twenties, writer and artist challenged and enriched one another’s work.Published on the occasion of the exhibition of Ray Johnson works from Wilson's archive at the Art Institute of Chicago, Frog Pond Splash embodies the energy, expansiveness and motion of their work and their friendship. Editor Elizabeth Zuba has selected short, perspicacious texts by Wilson (from both published and unpublished writings) and collage works by Johnson to create juxtapositions that do not explicate or illustrate; rather, they form a loose collage-like letter of works and writings that are less bound than assembled, allowing the reader to put the pieces together, to respond, to add to and return to the way Johnson required of his correspondents and fellow travelers.Taking its title from Wilson's haiku equivalence of Johnson's process, Frog Pond Splash is a small book but many things: a collage-like homage to their friendship, a treasure chest of prismatic "correspondances," as well as an unusual portrait of the disappearing, fractured Johnson through Wilson's words. Zuba's nuanced selection and arrangement of images and texts in this sumptuous little volume honors Johnson's "open system" (which rejected closed and consistent meanings, codes and symbols) in its open, associative, and intimate playfulness.

Ray Johnson (1927–1995) blurred the boundaries of life and art, of authorship and intimacy. Correspondence is the defining character of all of Johnson’s work, particularly his mail art. Intended to be read, to be received, to be corresponded with, his letters (usually both image and textual in character) were folded and delivered to an individual reader, to be opened and read, again and again. Johnson's correspondence includes letter to friends William S. Wilson, Dick Higgins, Richard Lippold, Toby Spiselman, Joseph Cornell, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Robert Motherwell, Eleanor Antin, Germaine Green, Lynda Benglis, Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Christo, Billy Name, Jim Rosenquist and Albert M. Fine, among many others. The subjects of his correspondence ranged from the New York avant-garde (Cage, Johns, de Kooning, Duchamp) to filmmakers such as John Waters, philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and writers such as Gertrude Stein and Marianne Moore. This collection of more than 200 selected letters and writings--most of which are previously unpublished--opens a new view into the sprawling, multiplicitous nature of Johnson’s art, revealing not only how he created relationships, glyphs and puzzles in connecting words, phrases, people and ideas, but also something about the elusive Johnson himself. In a 1995 article in The New York Times, Roberta Smith wrote: "Make room for Ray Johnson, whose place in history has been only vaguely defined. Johnson’s beguiling, challenging art has an exquisite clarity and emotional intensity that makes it much more than simply a remarkable mirror of its time, although it is that, too."