Artists Michael Thompson and Michael Hernandez de Luna sell their newest artworks for up to $1,500 each, even though none of the pieces is bigger than a postage stamp. They can’t be. They have to fit on the corner of an envelope.
Most artists would bristle at being called frauds and charlatans, but Thompson and De Luna celebrate it.
Each of the 74 works on display at a North Side gallery has fooled the U.S. Postal Service into canceling them as stamps, even though they depict subjects that have never been commemorated by the Postal Service, including Batman, Mao Tse-tung, Richard J. Daley or, in the more outrageous pieces, bare-chested women and condoms.
It is that approval, at least as it passes in a blur through the maws of the cancellation and sorting machines, that Thompson and De Luna crave and what they say gives their work its value.
Perhaps there is a bit of implicit critical respect on the part of postal officials. They say that although it is illegal, they do not intend to sweep in, raid the gallery and arrest the artists and imitators.
All this might seem like a funny way to make art. In simpler times, art was created with canvas, gesso and paint. Now, it is wrought from text and context.
Part of modern art’s trendy mission has always been to promote the rethinking of everyday objects. Artists are extending that concept by making-and circulating-their own money and postage stamps.
It is called Trompe L’Oeil, or Trick of the Eye Art.
The camp stamps, all used in mail runs, are on display at the River North gallery of Oskar Friedl, 750 N. Orleans St. They will be on public view until the end of June. Collections of the imitation-stamp envelopes, with wavy cancellation lines, sell from $800 to $1,500.
“It is a very popular show,” Friedl said.
“I think it’s very engaging art, though it’s not a massive genre,” noted Lynne Warren, curator of special projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
“The artwork is structured to reveal a process behind it, rather than create a object that is beautiful in itself, like a painting or sculpture. It’s the story behind its travels through the world, as a currency with value, that becomes the interesting thing.”
Warren recalled a day at home when her toddler son ran out of stickers and, to her horror, used all the postage stamps. “I tried to explain, `They’re like money,’ ” she said, but it was hard to get the point across.
The two Chicago artists follow, in many ways, the pioneering efforts of J.S.G. Boggs, an artist who makes money the old-fashioned way-at home.
“Boggs,” Boggs barked Tuesday, calling from Pittsburgh, where he is a research associate in art and ethics at Carnegie Mellon University. His latest struggle, he said, is a $2 million lawsuit he has filed against the Treasury Department and the Secret Service.
“They seized over 1,300 of my works of art, though they still can’t find a prosecutor who agrees with them,” he said.
As Boggs sees it, he is a barterer, not a counterfeiter, trading works of art that happen to look like U.S. legal tender for goods and services.
His bills have green printing on each side, but say “Pittsburgh, Pa.” instead of “Washington, D.C.” and carry his signature instead of the U.S. treasurer’s. He also prints “Willy” under President William McKinley.
In eight years, Boggs says he has transferred his art, with a face value of $250,000, for an equal amount of goods and services. It is, he adds, enough to make one think about commerce and “how we assign values to things.”
As for the Chicago stamps, many of the images come from flea markets.
What really creates value, Thompson and De Luna say, is approval from the federal government. That takes the form of cancellation marks, proof positive that someone can take studio stamps and stick ’em-then get ’em through the U.S. mails.
“We are arty guys,” said De Luna, 38, a traditional water and oil painter when he isn’t helping get out his computer-generated imitations. The idea for them, seized on by Thompson, 43, a sculptor and painter, came from a Garry Trudeau “Doonesbury” cartoon strip.
“These stamps are nothing but outragous, absolutely nuts,” said De Luna, sipping coffee in a Pilsen neighborhood coffee shop, reflecting on the art form with Thompson, who is better known for abstract kites-the kind meant to be shown, not flown.
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The possession of imitation stamps, no matter how authentic-looking, does not violate postal laws, but the use of them to move mail is a crime, punishable by fine, according to federal law. “The fact that the imitation looks like a postage stamp is not illegal,” said Chicago Postal Inspector John Ruberti, an attorney. “The problem comes when the imitation is used to send a letter through the mails, depriving the postal system of revenue that is due.”
Of all the letters the artists have mailed, only one has been returned for insufficient postage-that stamp is in the show too. Postal officials acknowledge that their detection equipment isn’t advanced enough to catch every phony stamp.
They also say it is not a big problem.
The stamps, Thompson allowed, are “considered a nuisance” by postal authorities. “Until the (Friedl) show, what we do was very hush-hush.”
So will the feds raid Friedl’s gallery?
Ruberti declined to say, but Friedl said he didn’t think so.
In defense of art and himself-and to placate postal inspectors-Friedl said he had affixed legitimate postage stamps to each envelope in the collection, though the stamps are out of sight, discreetly pasted on the back.
“People spend more time looking at these stamps,” he said. “The average time spent looking at a painting is three to five seconds. With the stamps, it is much longer.”
De Luna and Thompson said they like the recognition.
“What we do,” De Luna said, “is a proletarian form of entertainment. You don’t have to be an artist to enjoy it.”