"Founded in New York City by artist, collector and dealer William Copley, S.M.S.
was an art collection in a box, filled with small-scale, often whimsical,
artworks available by subscription. Delivering art through the post offered
Copley, and his collaborator Dmitri Petrov, a way to circumvent the art market
and make contemporary art accessible to nearly anyone. Inspired by Copley’s
mentor and friend Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, S.M.S. was conceived
as an inter-media and intergenerational publication that would present artworks
by prominent and unknown artists side by side. The magazine gathered an
impressive range including the Surrealist luminaries Man Ray and Meret
Oppenheim, Pop artists Richard Hamilton and Roy Lichtenstein, composers Lamont
Young and Terry Riley, and an up-and-coming generation of conceptual and
post-studio artists such as Joseph Kosuth and Bruce Nauman. Regardless of
stature, each was paid $100 for their contribution. This egalitarian spirit extended
to the communal atmosphere of Copley’s upper west side Letter Edged in Black
Press loft which functioned as an unofficial hangout for many of the
participants.
The six issues of S.M.S. are composed of “original reproductions”—luxurious, exacting replicas of each artist’s work in an edition of approximately 2,000. The magazine spared no expense, seeking out, and even inventing, varied and obscure production methods including Lil Picard’s labor intensive Burned Bow Tie—each of which needed to be individually singed. The enormous edition size—and the affordable price of $125 per subscription—enabled a much broader swath of the public to collect the internationally recognized artists contained in the portfolios. Ultimately short-lived, S.M.S. portfolios were mailed bi-monthly between February and December of 1968 directly to subscribers, with each portfolio containing approximately a dozen works of art." (quote and any extra photography taken directly from sms.sensatejournal.com)