Coup d’envois ou l’art à la lettre — Press Dossier, Musée de La Poste, Paris, 1989

Spiral-bound press dossier
Musée de La Poste, 34 boulevard de Vaugirard, Paris XVe
Photocopied and offset printed internal documentation
10 January – 25 March 1989

Rare spiral-bound press dossier produced for Coup d’envois ou l’art à la lettre, a large-scale 1989 exhibition at the Musée de La Poste examining correspondences between mail systems, conceptual art, artist communication networks, poetry, Fluxus strategies, and postal circulation. Includes references to more than one hundred artists and writers, among them Joseph Beuys, Roland Barthes, Carl Andre, Marcel Broodthaers, On Kawara, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jean Tinguely, Arman, and others associated with conceptual art, mail art, postwar European avant-garde networks, institutional critique, and systems-based artistic circulation.

Produced as a press dossier rather than a trade publication, the object retains the administrative texture of late-1980s institutional culture: photocopied pages, spiral binding, internal distribution logic, informational formatting, and temporary documentary function. Precisely because of this, the publication now feels unusually close to contemporary conversations around networks, circulation systems, delegated authorship, archives, metadata, communication infrastructures, and post-digital artistic identity.

The title itself — “Coup d’envois” (“postal dispatch” / “sending strike”) — transforms the exhibition into a system of transmission rather than a fixed exhibition event.

Seen now, the object feels unexpectedly adjacent to Philippe Thomas, Seth Siegelaub, Fluxus mail networks, early conceptual distribution systems, and contemporary platform-based image circulation.

Condition: Good vintage condition. Light age toning, handling wear, softened corners, surface rubbing, and minor institutional wear consistent with archive retention and administrative circulation.

A temporary communication structure retained long enough to become object again.

Shipping and handling included.