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A Book about Ray
The first full-career survey of the idiosyncratic life and work of Ray Johnson, a collagist, performance artist, and pioneer of mail art.
Ray Johnson (1927-1995), a.k.a. “New York's most famous unknown artist,” was notorious for the elaborate games he played with the institutions of the art world, soliciting their attention even as he rejected their invitations. In A Book about Ray, Ellen Levy offers a comprehensive study of the artist who turned the business of career-making into a tongue-in-cheek performance, tracing his artistic development from his arrival at Black Mountain College in 1945 to his death in 1995. Levy describes Johnson's practice as one that was constantly shifting—whether in tone, in its address to potential audiences, or among three primary artistic modes: collage, performance, and correspondence art.
A Book about Ray takes an elliptical path, circling around rather than trying to arrest in flight the elusive artist and his purposefully ephemeral art. By crafting the book in this way, Levy evokes Ray Johnson's art in the moment of its making and draws readers into the artist's world, while making them feel, from the beginning, that they somehow already know their way around that world. In exploring Johnson's scene, readers will also encounter the artists who influenced him, like Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp, and his friends and peers like Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. The work of such figures will look forever different in light of Johnson's subversive take on their shared aesthetic.
Suitable for readers both new to Ray Johnson and those already familiar with his work, A Book about Ray is a complete and vital portrait of an American original.
Ray Johnson (1927-1995), a.k.a. “New York's most famous unknown artist,” was notorious for the elaborate games he played with the institutions of the art world, soliciting their attention even as he rejected their invitations. In A Book about Ray, Ellen Levy offers a comprehensive study of the artist who turned the business of career-making into a tongue-in-cheek performance, tracing his artistic development from his arrival at Black Mountain College in 1945 to his death in 1995. Levy describes Johnson's practice as one that was constantly shifting—whether in tone, in its address to potential audiences, or among three primary artistic modes: collage, performance, and correspondence art.
A Book about Ray takes an elliptical path, circling around rather than trying to arrest in flight the elusive artist and his purposefully ephemeral art. By crafting the book in this way, Levy evokes Ray Johnson's art in the moment of its making and draws readers into the artist's world, while making them feel, from the beginning, that they somehow already know their way around that world. In exploring Johnson's scene, readers will also encounter the artists who influenced him, like Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp, and his friends and peers like Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. The work of such figures will look forever different in light of Johnson's subversive take on their shared aesthetic.
Suitable for readers both new to Ray Johnson and those already familiar with his work, A Book about Ray is a complete and vital portrait of an American original.
394 pages, Hardcover
Published October 15, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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February 5, 2025fun to see the images i scanned in a glossy nyt bestseller 😌
November 7, 2024
Magnificent. This is the first book that captures the essence of “New York’s Most Famous Unknown Artist” Ray Johnson. Levy crafts a story of a complex man who the world will keep discovering for many years.
December 31, 2024
I first read about Ray Johnson in the Andy Warhol biography by Blake Gopnik. I found his concept of correspondence art intriguing and learned that he had planned his suicide quite intricately leaving his house arranged with all the intentionality of a suicide note.
I just happened upon an ad for this book in the New York Review of Books and had it shipped to me the next day. I had read a couple books about Ray but none of them did anything to decipher the enigma of his life or art. This book not only gave me insight into his artistic vision but ignited something for me.
Moticos is the artistic idea that brought things together for me. When Ray talked about them being on the side of a railcar, it lit up my growing sensibility that my life is art and art is my life. I take photos of train car graffiti so that connected everything in my daily life. I see Moticos as similar to Duchamps’ Infrathin and Schwitters Merz, intangible qualities that can attach to anything. Suddenly, I found myself making connections between my reading, art and poetry projects.
There is lots more to this book than merely that. Johnson had a bizarrely freeing and powerful sense of life and art. Even more than Duchamp he embodies the ambivalence between drive and sabotaging that drive. Duchamp worked with people beautifully while Johnson often didn’t, hiding away, not showing up or not going inside to see the a show, engaging at an angle even when people were eager for him to engage. Yet this is what made his odd art so powerful once an interpreter like Ellen Levy guides the reader’s eyes and mind to make the right connections. Once they have been made, they can’t be unmade.
I just happened upon an ad for this book in the New York Review of Books and had it shipped to me the next day. I had read a couple books about Ray but none of them did anything to decipher the enigma of his life or art. This book not only gave me insight into his artistic vision but ignited something for me.
Moticos is the artistic idea that brought things together for me. When Ray talked about them being on the side of a railcar, it lit up my growing sensibility that my life is art and art is my life. I take photos of train car graffiti so that connected everything in my daily life. I see Moticos as similar to Duchamps’ Infrathin and Schwitters Merz, intangible qualities that can attach to anything. Suddenly, I found myself making connections between my reading, art and poetry projects.
There is lots more to this book than merely that. Johnson had a bizarrely freeing and powerful sense of life and art. Even more than Duchamp he embodies the ambivalence between drive and sabotaging that drive. Duchamp worked with people beautifully while Johnson often didn’t, hiding away, not showing up or not going inside to see the a show, engaging at an angle even when people were eager for him to engage. Yet this is what made his odd art so powerful once an interpreter like Ellen Levy guides the reader’s eyes and mind to make the right connections. Once they have been made, they can’t be unmade.
December 10, 2024
I immediately became a fan after watching a documentary of Ray Johnson (How to Draw a Bunny) and someone said they’d only pay 3/4 the sale price for a work and was mailed 3/4 of the piece. A Book About Ray (@mitpress) by Ellen Levy is only making me more of a fan.
December 18, 2025
what a beautiful book- a collage itself!
made me want to read marianne moore and emily dickinson etc.
made me want to read marianne moore and emily dickinson etc.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews