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@rayjohnsonestate
#RayJohnson opens at Matthew Marks Gallery 523 W 24th St tomorrow night 6-8pm
With sadness, the Ray Johnson Estate acknowledges the passing of Johnson’s good friend William Linich aka Billy Name. In 1959, Johnson met Billy Linich (later known as Billy Name) at New York’s Serendipity and in 1963 Johnson introduced him to Warhol at an event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Billy Name became a key figure at Warhol’s Factory, responsible for covering the Factory walls with aluminum foil, which resulted from Johnson bringing Warhol to Name's similarly silver-covered apartment and suggesting Warhol have Billy do the same for the Factory. Billy took the above photo of Ray and Andy at the Factory in 1964 where the foil walls sparkle in the background of their silhouettes. Underneath is a more recent photograph of Frances Beatty - the Director of the Ray Johnson Estate, William S. Wilson - Johnson’s good friend and archivist and William ‘Billy Name’ Linich in 2011.
http://www.artnews.com/2016/07/18/billy-name-legendary-photographer-of-andy-warhols-factory-dies-at-76/
With sadness, the Ray Johnson Estate acknowledges the passing of Johnson’s good friend William Linich aka Billy Name.
In 1959, Johnson met Billy Linich (later known as Billy Name) at New York’s Serendipity and in 1963 Johnson introduced him to Warhol at an event at the Brooklyn Academny of Music. Billy Name became a key figure at Warhol’s Factory, responsible for covering the Factory walls with foil, which resulted from Johnson bringing Warhol to Name's similarly silver-covered apartment. Billy took the photo of Ray and Andy at the Factory in 1964 where the foil walls sparkle behind their silhouettes. The aluminum foil walls sparkle in the background. Underneath is a more recent photograph of Frances Beatty - the Director of the Ray Johnson Estate, William S. Wilson - Johnson’s good friend and archivist and William ‘Billy Name’ Linich in 2011.
BILLY NAME, LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER OF ANDY WARHOL’S FACTORY, DIES AT 76
Follow us on Instagram [@rayjohnsonestate] for weekly posts from the archives...
Photograph taken by Ray Johnson in 1992.
This past Valentine’s Day marked the 51st anniversary of the publication of the The Paper Snake by Something Else Press. Originally Johnson wanted his book to be called “Papa R Snake” and was disappointed with the change in title. He later added the “Papa R Snake” to page 15 (pictured above) of his “A Book About Death”, which was printed on February 16, 1965, two days after The Paper Snake.
The Paper Snake was re-released in 2014 and is available through Siglio Press.
Read more about The Paper Snake in Black Mountain College Studies Vol. 8, which you can find here : http://www.blackmountainstudiesjournal.org/wp/?page_id=4427
"The Ray Johnson Estate mourns the passing of William S. “Bill” Wilson, who died on February 1, 2016. Bill, called "Ray Johnson's Boswell” by New York Times writer Michael Kimmelman, was one of Johnson’s closest friends and his unwavering champion. He generously welcomed students and scholars to his extraordinary Johnson archive and wrote brilliant essays that provided deep insight into Johnson, his era and his work. Always generous with sharing his profound knowledge, Bill returned questions posed to him from all over the world through ever inspired and voluminous emails, phone calls and letters. He was truly a correspondent extraordinaire. There is no doubt that his legacy and work will only continue to expand its reach in the future. Regarding his relationship to the artists he studied, Bill once strikingly said, "In my private aesthetic, I feel and think that something is beautiful when I desire to conceive something with it." The Ray Johnson Estate is profoundly grateful for the many thrilling conceptions and inceptions, on Ray Johnson and in all of his art scholarship, with which Bill has left us.The art world, this estate, and his many friends and family, have lost a cherished friend and mentor."
-Richard L. Feigen, Chairman and Frances F. L. Beatty, President, Richard L. Feigen & Co.
"It is hard to think of a more spirited conversationalist and communication partner than Bill Wilson. His vast reading and detailed knowledge of a dizzying array of subject matters, personalities and historical incidents kept the associations coming hard and fast; a single line of thought would soon become a delta of interconnected narratives and lines of interrogation, kept in check only by a brilliant analytic wit. Perhaps it was his aesthetic and intellectual passion for the reverberating detail and its wider networks of associations and connections that made him such a good friend to the artist Ray Johnson, whose mail art and collage practice seems to have been founded on similar principles of operation. Bill was in many ways Johnson’s ideal archivist: not just because he stored and took care of a significant body of his work but also (and even more significantly) because he kept creating new nodal points in Johnson’s network. He took its wealth of minute visual and verbal details seriously enough to constantly and passionately question their potential implications or directionality, without ever closing down on final answers. And in this way he kept the archive vibrant and mobile, in word and in writing."
-Ina Blom, Art Critic and Professor of Art History, University of Oslo
“If Ray Johnson was unknowable, as William S. “Bill” Wilson implied after Johnson’s death when he noted: ‘Ray, we never knew you’, it was not for want of trying, for Bill devoted so much of his time, particularly after Ray’s death in 1995, to knowing yet more.
Bill took it upon himself after his great friendship with Ray Johnson in the latter’s lifetime, to promote the achievement and as far as was possible the nature of Ray’s life’s work.
Bill had other enthusiasms and preoccupations, but Ray was at the centre of his concerns. His house became a Ray Johnson Archive storing not only correspondence but also many works by Ray, from drawings to collages to reliefs. On entering his house visitors could immediately enjoy a gallery of diverse works by his hero.
Many of these artworks were sent directly to Bill in the early days of their friendship, and they help to define a great many features of Ray’s early development. But Bill added to his collection over the years, acquiring more works but also collections of Ray’s correspondence with others, not to mention copies of publications in which he featured. His Johnsonian archive had many strands.
If his Ray Johnson Archive was a generative core for his deliberations over the riddles that were Ray, Bill was also very receptive to others who toiled in the same vineyard. He would encourage us, exchange information and ideas, and was extremely generous with his time both in discussions but also in writing and dispatching cascades of emails.
One hopes that eventually more research will reveal how much of Bill’s thinking and knowledge informed Ray’s work. But for now, we can carry forward memories of Bill’s generosity, his keenness to enlarge horizons and his twinkling and mischievous sense of humour.”
-Clive Phillpot 4-2-16
We have a small collection of this drawing series of “broken dishes” at the Ray Johnson Estate, which were created at various times from 1978 to 1989. The drawings are done in Ray Johnson's signature graphic style. His viewpoint is often above the object and flattened. It is completely manipulated so that the bases of glasses and openings are not presented in conventional perspective, but do suggest the overall shapes of the dishes.
The choice of cracked and broken crockery may be linked to the eastern philosophies that Johnson had an interest in. Zen was a popular subject during the 1950s with Alan Watts' lectures being broadcast on the radio, and the lectures of D.T. Suzuki—which John Cage sat in on—being given at Columbia University, so Johnson was certainly aware of its basic precepts. He learned more about certain elements, like the operations of chance, from John Cage whom he lived next to on Monroe Street for several years. The lower east side is not far from New York's Chinatown, and Johnson often brought back things he found there with pictographic characters on them. These signs were often incorporated into his collages. In the case of broken vessels, the concept of emptiness, or the chance shapes created by the physical remnants of a once-whole object have a kind of Zen quality that Johnson would have admired.
Johnson also associated the broken dishes with his network of artist friends and pop culture icons. Some of the above example’s were directed specifically to these figures. In a typed letter from November 8, 1967, to J.O. Mallander, Johnson mentions his broken dishes series, he writes:
"Yoko Ono I wrote once to because a wine glass got broken in a fantastic ying-yang pattern. I never mailed her the drawing of the glass."
Ruth Asawa was born today in 1926. To celebrate here is a fun letter from Ray to Ruth from when they were both students at Black Mountain College. This letter is on view at the ICA Boston, but is only up for one more day!
Happy Birthday #Cezanne !! [Collage by Ray Johnson, dated November 1994] #rayjohnson #christo
In Remembrance of Ray Johnson on the 21st anniversary of his death, an undated interview with Ray as interviewer and interviewee.
Merry Christmas from the Ray Johnson Estate.
The pink silhouette shape of Lynda Benglis in this piece comes from the announcement card for her 1974 show Metallized Knots (see an altered version written on by Benglis here).
Ray Johnson, Untitled (Pink Lynda Benglis with Christmas Tree), 1994. Painting on wood, 14-5/8 by 10-1/4 inches.
Dear Paul Klee, Happy Birthday!
Collage by Ray Johnson, 10.9.86 and 10.15.88
Happy National Letter Writing Day :: Here's some advice from Ray...
In honor of World AIDS Day, some insight into how Ray Johnson felt about the AIDS crisis in the form of two letters from the same box in the Estate archive. One, from the MoMA soliciting the names of victims of AIDS for their "Day Without Art" display, and the second from Ray expressing anger at the solicitation.
Despite their different views on how best to memorialize those lost in the AIDS epidemic, both letters are evidence of the emotional struggles inherent to the still ongoing fight against AIDS.
20 Questions on Snakes by Ray Johnson
Happy Halloween from the Ray Johnson Estate.
Untitled (Dear EtanT,), 1990-94. Collage on cardboard panel. 7-5/8 by 7-1/2 inches.
Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday
Please join us for the Opening Reception tomorrow from 6pm - 8pm at Printed Matter! Due to the wonderful response- this will be the first iteration of the show, which will represent half of the artists who submitted templates. The show will be rehung on November 12th with all the remaining works showcased, just in time for our panel on November 17th! Check out http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/exhibitions/current/pleaseaddto-and-return-to-submissions/ to see all the submissions!