Editing Artistamp (section)

==History==
[[File:ArtistampLDzhepko1971.jpg|thumb|Artistamp by [[Leonid Dzhepko]], c. 1971]]
The first [[artist]] to produce an "artist’s stamp" is open to interpretation. It did not take many years after the introduction of postage stamps before UK commercial photographers saw a market in personalised stamp photographs incorporating an individual's portrait within a stamp-like printed border, printed in perforated sheets with gummed backs.<ref>Example photo stamps and references from the 1860s can be found at http://www.fadingimages.uk/stamps2.asp</ref> [[Fine art]]ists were certainly [[Contract|commissioned]] to create [[poster stamp]]s ([[advertising]] [[poster]]s in [[collectible]] stamp form) from the late 1800s, but none appear to have worked with the format outside the commercial or [[advertising]] context.

In 1919, [[Dada]]ist [[Raoul Hausmann]] affixed a [[Portrait|self-portrait]] postage stamp to a [[postcard]],<ref>John Held, Jr., [http://www.mailartist.com/johnheldjr/RobertWatts.html ''Robert Watts: The Complete Postage Stamp Sheets, 1961-1986''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090405050332/http://www.mailartist.com/johnheldjr/RobertWatts.html |date=2009-04-05 }}</ref> but given that [[Dada]] was determinedly [[anti-art]] (at least in theory), calling this an "artist’s stamp" seems almost counterintuitive.

[[Germany|German]] artist [[Karl Schwesig]], while a [[political prisoner]] during [[World War II]], drew a series of pseudo-stamps on the blank, [[perforation|perforated]] margins of postage stamp sheets, using coloured inks. Jas Felter asserts that this 1941 series, which illustrated life in a [[concentration camp]], is typically accepted as the first true set of artist's stamps.<ref>Peter Frank, [http://www.artpool.hu/Artistamp/PFranke.html ''Postal Modernism: Artists' Stamps and Stamp Images'']</ref>

[[United States|American]] [[Robert Watts (artist)|Robert Watts]], a member of the [[Fluxus]] group, became the first artist to create a full sheet of [faux] postage stamps within a fine art context when he produced a perforated block of 15 stamps combining [[popular culture|popular]] and [[erotic art|erotic]] imagery in 1961.<ref>John Held, Jr., ''ibid.''</ref>

Canadian [[multimedia artist]] and [[philatelist]] [[T Michael Bidner]], who made his life's work the cataloguing of all then-known artist's stamps, coined the word "artistamp" in 1982.<ref>James W. Felter, ''Artistamps: Francobolli d’artista'', Italy, 2000</ref> It quickly became the term of choice amongst [[mail art]]ists.

Artist [[Clifford Harper]] published a series of designs for [[anarchy|anarchist]] postage stamps in 1988, featuring portraits of [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], [[Emma Goldman]], [[Oscar Wilde]], [[Emiliano Zapata]] and [[Herbert Read]].