Increasingly interested in issues related to censorship, and working with artists in the Soviet Bloc countries of then Eastern Europe, the final, unpublished issue of PostHype documented Jacob’s mail and telephone art project entitled East/West: Mail Art & Censorship.
The only printed copy of 4.1 was made for the Museum of Modern Art, NY, when it acquired a complete run of PostHype in 1987.
PostHype 4.1
Contributors (in no particular order):
Dave McLimans
Salvatore Anselli
LF Duch
Oh Suzanna
Gene Laughter
Volker Hamann
Tibor Papp/Steve Random
David Cole
Eugenio Dittborn
Guy Bleus
Hans Nevidal
Chandros/Katsiani
Creative Thing
Andrej & Marta Tisma
Clemente Padin
Bill Quinn
Jon Held, Jr.
Alex A. Igloo
Birger Jesch
Rudi Wilderjans
C. Stetter/L. Jackson
Jim Klein
Eduardo Diaz
Peter Frank
Robin Crozier
Harley Francis
Jurgen Kierspel
Fred Truck
PostHype was founded in 1981. The first issue was created, using pressed Letraset on paper, as a birthday gift to the artist Steven Durland, and modeled on his satirical mini-magazine Tacit. Early issues of PostHype were printed with an original rubber stamp, hand carved from photographs made using the photobooth machine at the Times Square arcade known as Playland, which recorded the visits of friends and other mail artists to New York City. Later issues expanded to document Jacob’s mail art activities.
Riding Beggar ceased publication in the 1990s. A complete run of PostHype was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1987. Incomplete sets are held by the Getty Research Institute (acquired with the Jean Brown, Bern Porter, Carlo Pittore, and other people’s papers) and active mail art archives such as the Artpool Art Research Center.
The Riding Beggar archive is housed with the John P. Jacob Papers at the Beinecke Rare Books Library, Yale University.
