Talk:Ray Johnson
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As of 8/20/2006, There is someone selling Ray Johnson artwork on eBay, or artwork that looks like Ray Johnson artwork, for about $10.00 a piece. The descriptions are extremely odd.
'Contemporary artist' - he died almost 15 years ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.103.172.9 (talk) 16:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The person who has done the most comprehensive recent edits/additions to this is article is also the vice president of the gallery which represents Johnson's work. Is that a conflict of interest? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.14.8.188 (talk) 06:15, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Copyleft
AFAIK Ray Johnson came up with the term and concept "copyleft" independently and had no influence on the hackers later; it was parallel evolution, like the octopus's eye. Apparently pop art and hackerdom were autonomous autarkies, removed in time as well as in space. If the mileaux had any overlap, I haven't come across any documentation of it whatsoever. Ray Johnson has props as the precursor of open source in the arts if not software.
[edit] Real person?
I have a friend that swears "How to Draw a Bunny" is a fake documentary. To support this she says that there are no pre-How to Draw a Bunny references to Johnson anywhere online or in print. I had certainly never heard of him before. Matthew Meta 07:06, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Real person! (but now deceased!)
I met Ray Johnson in a bar on Second Avenue in New York City about 1984-1985. I was introduced to him by John Daley, the assistant to the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (deceased 1986), after he returned from Europe, having lived principally in Rome and London. John was occupied at the time with editing my first cousin's art history Doctoral dissertation, then edited the Vatican Exhibit two "coffee table" books for American publication. He also wrote the catalog for the Carravaggio exhibit at the Metropolitan, and his last work was the catalog for an exhibit of Etruscan art. I know this note is significantly more about John Daley than Ray Johnson, but the two are inextricably intertwined in my memory. The next news I heard about Ray Johnson was that he gave a "performance artwork" exhibition in Hempstead, Long Island---or was it Mineola, or Hicksville? After that, a friend of mine who is a librarian (managerial staff) brought over a copy of the Village Voice, and nine months later, when I picked it up to read, the top blue headline announced Ray Johnson's death in Sag Harbor, as described briefly in the body of this article. I never saw "How to Draw a Bunny", but I saw a number of Ray's pen and ink drawing of potato mashers, from his "potato masher phase" and some of the "personal ads" he designed and exhibited (as best I recall, some were from Marilyn Monroe or other famous "pop" figures). He seemed to be rather creative and inventive, but I don't recall conversing with him much at the corner bar of Second Avenue and Fifth Street, in the East Village. Noteworthy was that he had a shaved head. So, he was real, as real as the author of these words. 4.162.177.189 (talk) 03:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- he was also mentioned occasionally in popular photography magazine (of all places) in the 70s. that's where i first heard of him
