Raven Row

Friday night go to the opening of Alex Sainsbury's new space at Raven Row, near Liverpool Street. Bump into Clive and his wife crossing Bishopsgate: I can't imagine where they could be going. The first show is Ray Johnson, collagist, mail artist, concrete poet - ignored by Richard Kostelanetz's 'Dictionary of the avant-garde'.  Taught by Albers at Black Mountain, the Bauhaus grid structures his collages. There is a sad angle to the art world - Fluxus, Pop, insatiably curious, not quite name-dropping. In 1955 he began a series of 'moticos' (is this the founding etymology of emoticons?), collages on the cardboard inserts of laundered shirts. Three years later he started to send out mail art, and began to request recipients to ' please add to and return' - pioneering interactive art, way beyond the surrealists' exquisite corpses. This was later called 'The New York Correspondence School' - distance unlearning?

Get round the show before it gets busy - it's a wonderful space but I imagine very expensive to invigilate. It suddenly gets busy and it's full of the jeunesse doree - then equally suddenly I begin to recognise friends. Steven greets me - he's lent some material, and we talk about mail art - and he wonders (as I do) when I'll finish my book on the subject. I tell Elinor I've written my piece on artists' books for Art Monthly, which includes two of her books. Then Louisa comes down the stairs and we are into mail art again.