Small Scale Subversion: Mail Art & Artistamps

by John Held Jr.

Although increasingly appreciated in fine art and stamp collecting circles, artist postage stamps, or artistamps, are more likely to be traded between the people who create them than they are to be exhibited in commercial art galleries or read about in philatelic journals. Artistamps are part and parcel of the grassroots network known as Mail Art, an alternative art of creative long-distance communication that intuited the demand for cross-cultural exchange long before the Internet. Although seemingly rigid, the postage stamp format allows flexible approaches in painting, watercolor, offset, photography, photocopy, rubber-stamping, engraving, digitization and sculpture.

318 pages, Paperback

First published April 11, 2015

Reviews

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a fantastic book of essays on artistamps and mail art. so much inspiration and so many familiar names. the only drawback to the book is that the pictures are not of very good quality, but the interesting text makes up for this.