Several years ago I received five issues of Vile Magazine as a gift from a colleague.   He packaged up all 5 copies he owns (the complete volume 3) and a few other things which I’ll share later.  Honestly, it was one of the most generous, kindest gifts I’ve ever received.  Exactly the kind of thing I adore: mail art, art history, documents, and newspapers.  Getting that gift in the winter of 2005 was like Christmas coming early.  Over the years I’ve flipped through them, read them, looked at them for inspiration, and keep them on a special bookshelf.

A bit of Internet research turned up very little on this incredible and influential magazine produced by Anna Banana and her (then) husband Bill Gaglione.  Over the next few weeks I plan to scan as much of the magazines as I can and post them on Flickr.  A warning, many images are marginally NSFW (unless you work in a museum).  The Internet isn’t totally bereft of Vile information (sorry, couldn’t resist).  This essay, “Misreading Mail Art” by  Matt Feranto, is useful and I quite like the writer who noted that, “[These Magazines] demonstrate  a much more strategically engaging recipe for institutional critque than the work of Hans Haacke, currently on view in a solo show at X [sic]; the jouissance of mail art makes Haacke’s strategies look remarkably didactic by comparison.”

I’ll post a few choice images on this blog too.  Click through to see more of Vile’s “Christmas Special 1975.”

A note on the scanning quality: 1. I’m doing these on my home scanner, so it wont be the highest quality.  Apologies.  2. There is going to be some gutter shadow, I’m unwilling to push down too hard bc the paper is getting quite brittle and I’m afraid to break the spine on the perfect bound issues or risk tearing the paper near the staples on the staple-bound issues.  3.  You can click through to Flickr to download the full-size images.

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I’m also going to do a bit of research into Anna Banana and refresh my memory when it comes to Mail Art.  Years ago I delivered a paper at an art history conference called “The Mailbox Is the Museum: Mail Art and the Avant Garde.”  Of course, that was several hard drives ago and now I cant find an electronic format of the paper to share with you all.  I’ll re-type it… maybe.

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If you haven’t yet, I hope you’ll rent How to Draw A Bunny an incredible documentary about Ray Johnson (who some call the “father” of Mail Art).

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