Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book features two Chicago artists who have taken on the International Postal Authorities and really scored a bulls eye Their unique and often hilarious home-made stamps have been sent from virtually every country in the world and arrived to tell the tale. This is their story. We have chosen them from the cream of the crop for this must-see book -- lavishly illustrated in full colour and complete with essays from leading authorities in both the stamp and art worlds. Sure to offer hours of viewing pleasure and provide a welcome addition to any coffee table.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. 7)
• A Stamp Collector's View (p. 8)
• Artistamps and the Postal System (p. 11)
• Pushing the Envelope: Mail Art and the Two Michaels (p. 15)
• The Stamp Project and its Consequences (p. 22)
• Color Plates (p. 26)
• The Stamp Story (p. 86)
• Color Plates (p. 92)
• In Appreciation of (p. 152)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Fake postage stamps by Chicago artists Thompson and Hernandez de Luna, both of whom are under cease-and-desist orders from the U.S. Postal Service, are featured in this highly illustrated expos? of their lives, philosophy, and work. Introductory essays by philatelists and the artists themselves explain the history of mail art and its appeal to collectors. Beautifully made and reproduced here, the Pop-inspired stamps carry politically provocative themes and in-your-face sexual content. The artists go out of their way to cultivate controversy and bad-guy images. Their success in "fooling" the Postal Service two times out of ten is not so remarkable, given the widespread use of high-speed canceling machines. For comprehensive contemporary art collections only. Note: If you order from the publisher, you're promised a pair of original artist stamps but be sure to double-check the outside parcel postage as well. Russell T. Clement, Northwestern Univ. Lib., Evanston, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Sick to death of pop art and its aesthetic pranks ala Marcel Duchamp, who exhibited a urinal as a specimen of found art? Then give a gander to Thompson and Hernandez de Luna's playful fake postage, which the two artists proudly display not just in perforated-sheet form but also on pieces of mail, scored by the cancellation marks that indicate their successful transit through more than one country's postal system. The stamps' imagery is outrageous--a nude woman's crotch (Courbet's 1866 painting, The Origin of the World), a marijuana plant, donkeys copulating ("Bill's Party Train"), sequential depictions of the Titanic ("Going," "Going," "Going," and "Gone"), a man and a woman duking it out ("Support Domestic Violence"), penises ("Tom," "Dick," and "Harry"), and so forth--but highly amusing. If what it depicts doesn't bring a smile, then the audacity of sending real mail adorned with it should. Both artists discuss their works' raison d'etre, and a stamp collector, a fellow unofficial stamp artist, and an art historian weigh in, too. --Ray Olson