Hitchiker of Ray
Johnson (mail artist)
on the expressway out of Detroit.
In September,
1981, Ray called and asked me my favorite word. I told him "radar" because
its spells both ways, just like how it works. In November he sent me a
xerox of an image incorporating the word and a note saying he hoped that
I made a lot of photo-documention of the Hitchiker project and asking "What
do you do with your old "cut-out" shapes (the background shape)?".
I called him a year later to find out for the record what he wrote on
the back of his Hitchiker and where he abandoned it. He told me he still
had it. He said he was having trouble letting go of it. I told him abandonment
was his part of the deal and that he agreed to it and had to do it. He
called me back a few weeks later and told me he had exhibited it somewhere
in Long Island. He told me he couldn't let
it go, that he had added a necklace and had grown too attached to
it. Using a label John H. Neff had put on him, I said "Ray, you're the
Master of the Throw-away Gesture. Give it up. It's only an image."
I never heard from Ray again.
On January 13, 1995, Ray Johnson stunned his friends and the art world
by going off a bridge into the glassy waters of Sag Harbor, Long Island.
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