Queer Networks: Ray Johnson’s Correspondence Art

Art historian Kienle’s esoteric debut examines how queerness shaped the idiosyncratic career of artist Ray Johnson (1927–1995). Kienle focuses less on the homoerotic content of Johnson’s works than the “queer” methods he employed from 1955 to 1975, including mailing his collages (which often used such “homoerotic materials” as “beefcake photos” from physique magazines) via the U.S. post office in an attempt to use the state’s tools against its intentions to police queerness. In the early 1960s, Johnson obliquely protested anti-queer gentrification efforts in New York City through letters to the editor in the Village Voice that were notable for their “campy wording destabilizing gender identity” (“I had dinner last night with Snow White and the six other dwarfs and wasn’t that a romp?”) and “references to the escapades of [Johnson’s] queer milieu.” Johnson also circulated “counterpublicity” for his imaginary Robin Gallery that aimed to foster “queer modes of belonging that resist[ed] the modern myth of a singular and unified public.” Drawing liberally on critical theory (Deleuze and Foucault, among others), Kienle analyzes in diligent detail the intriguing and sometimes bizarre ways in which Johnson used his marginal status to “prank the art world from its periphery.” This opens a revealing new lens on an enigmatic art world figure. (Dec.)