Mail art is artwork created specifically for regular postal mail delivery, usually on a postcard or envelope, but it can also be a package. The practice of designing art in the size and shape of a postage stamp, not to replace the real stamp but to decorate an envelope alongside the real stamp, is referred to as artistamps. Mail art participants can use painting, drawing, rubberstamping, or printmaking to create their pieces. They can use collage or other techniques to make their artwork.
When it comes to the creation of mail art, there are two schools of thought. One school of thought holds that the art form began with artist Marcel Duchamp, who sent out a batch of his hand-made postcards in 1916. According to the opposing camp, art mail was first conceived in the 1950s another artist, Ray Johnson, who mailed his artwork, including collages. Following Ray Johnson’s mailing, an informal group of artists called the New York Correspondence School of Art formed to do the same with their artworks, sending them through the mail. Following a Whitney Museum of American Art exhibit about two decades after Ray Johnson’s first mail art was delivered the postal service, the art form gained popularity. The number of mail art exhibitions and mailings increased, and magazines began to write about it, further spreading the word.
Post Secret, a powerful project that publishes new examples on the Internet every Sunday morning, showcases the art form, also known as “mailart.” People send postcards to the site containing their secrets written in a limited number of words and accompanied their own personal artwork. Unlike traditional mail art, where artists send their creations to a variety of people, artists who send their creations to Post Secret send them only to Frank Warren, the site’s founder, in the hopes of being published. These small works of art, on the other hand, are similar to other mail art in that everyone who handles or comes into contact with the postcards gets to see and read them along the way.