Jeremy Cooper (1) (1950–)

The postcard as you’ve never seen it before. This appealing book collects the best of these mail-able, miniature works of art by the likes of Yoko Ono and Carl Andre.

The accessibility and familiarity of a postcard makes it an artistic medium rich with potential for subversion, appropriation, or manipulation for political, satirical, revolutionary, or playful intent. The inexpensiveness of production encourages artists to experiment with their design; the only artistic restriction: that it fits through the mailbox slot. Unlike traditional works of art, the postcard requires nothing more than a stamp for it to be seen on the other side of the world. Made of commonplace material, postcards invite handling, asking to be picked up, turned over, and shown to friends―to be included in our lives.

The World Exists to Be Put on a Postcard features postcards, several reproduced at actual size, designed by notable modern and contemporary artists, including Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Joseph Beuys, Tacita Dean, Gilbert & George, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Dieter Roth, Gavin Turk, Mark Wallinger, Rachel Whiteread, and Hannah Wilke, many of which are published here for the first time. Organized thematically into chapters, such as “Graphic Postcards,” “Political Postcards,” “Portrait Postcards,” and “Composite Postcards,” this book demonstrates the significance of artists’ postcards in contemporary art.

100 color illustrations… (meer)

Precisely what I needed, when I needed it: soothing descriptions of non-threatening nature, with just enough 'but really, it's about depression!' to keep me from feeling like I was eating endless junk food. Now, that will not appeal to all that many people, I would have though. But Fitzcarraldo published it, so there must be a few people out there, like me, who would really like it if people just started publishing long novels in the form of journals, filled with lists of tree species and how to care for them appropriately. Also really inspired by Anglophilia. I can't wait until I (am rich enough to) move to the English countryside and spend my days pottering in the garden, only maybe without the depression.… (meer)

I'm gonna be honest, I'm totally sitting on the fence with this one. If I felt that this was purely a novel - ie. a work of fiction - then I would probably rate it higher. But, but... There is this palpable sense that our unnamed narrator, a 50-something man now living in Somerset, but who has lots of contacts in the art/antique world, is actually just a thinly-veiled portrait of the author himself. And as we read on, this lack of distinction started to irritate me. Either write and publish a journal that chronicles your life and struggles with mental health, or don't; but please don't pass it off as fiction, or auto-fiction, or whatever you want to call it.

The premise is intriguing, and the teasing out of facts through sideways allusions, or even omissions, did give the whole book a sense of fragility. The observations on nature were interesting, especially for a city-dweller like myself who, frankly, couldn't tell one variety of tree from another (I know, shame on me!). The very real sense that nature just gets on with it, takes everything in its stride - a ewe losing her lamb, or fallen trees after a storm - is in stark contrast to the suffering of our narrator, and of those he encounters. This paradox of the human condition is at the heart of the book, and the 'diary' entries were an attempt to be spontaneous - although they were sometimes a little too perfect, even the grammatical or factual errors seemed too deliberate at times.

So, overall I did get a lot out of the book, but I could not ever let go of the feeling that this is not a novel. What it is, however, is a worthy attempt to write about mental health issues, and that should be applauded.… (meer)

Over the last twenty years an increasing number of artists have turned to expressing themselves through postcards. Whether by way of installation, collage, addition to, or alteration of existing postcards, or the production of postcards themselves, many prominent artists employ the medium in some form. Artists’ Postcards traces the origin of artists’ fascination with postcards from the early 1900s but with a focus on the contemporary, revealing the significant number of artists who have made creative and unusual artworks in postcard form. With 400 images of postcards created by many well-known artists, Artists’ Postcards is the first critical guide to the subject. From surrealists to Fluxus and conceptual artists, this book includes an array of historical and contemporary postcards by such artists as George Grosz, Bruce Nauman, Richard Long, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, Joseph Beuys, Ben Vautier,… (meer)