is not always accurate)
"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."