Commonpress 22, Magazine of Art, October 1979: “You Can Know More Than You Can Tell”

Black & white illus. throughout. [44] pp. 12mo, pictorial wrappers, lower wrapper rubber-stamped, staple-bound. Amherst, Massachusetts: 1979.


A scarce issue of the mail art periodical Commonpress, edited and published by American mail artist Steven Durland (b. 1951). With ca. 40 contributions by mail artists, such as Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Simon Anderson, Paulo Bruscky, A. M. Fine, Nicola Frangione, Graciela Gutierrez Marx, Clemente Padin, Pawel Petasz, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, etc. In excellent condition. With the editor’s address rubber-stamped (truncated) on the inside of the upper wrapper.


❧ “Petasz launched this travelling magazine in 1977, and it may have been contributed to the idea that, in Petasz’s opinion, if each issue was edited by a different person and therefore the place of publication also changed, Polish authorities would not be able to control editorial work or ban the magazine. After the first issue [published in December 1977] Petasz only undertook the task of coordination. The practice was that the person who wanted to edit a Commonpress issue could announce any topic freely. If they wanted to know which issue it would be, it was necessary to exchange letters with Petasz. Then in each finished Commonpress publication the planned topic of the next issues, the deadlines to hand in contributions and the address of the editors were announced. This way the magazine was passed from hand to hand and the participants handing in their works followed the wandering addresses of editors to any part of the world. By this means Commonpress published nearly 60 magazines of very different characters in several years…
“The whole project could be compared to one big assembling whose centre does not receive contributions by the artists but the editors participating in it present different magazines under a common title. The issues themselves hardly resembled assemblings, since they were Mail Art compilations…”–Géza Perneczky, Assembling Magazines: 1969-2000 (2007), pp. 72-73. (Inventory #: 10870)