Kasmin and his postcards

From 1963 onwards, John Kasmin’s  Bond Street gallery was a place of pilgrimage for London art students and aspiring abstract painters.  Accessed via a long narrow corridor between shop premises, the pristine gallery space was tall, top lit, and painted in Brilliant White.  Exceptionally well bred young women sat at the reception desk, barely concealing their distaste for the uncouth, disheveled art students who attempted to engage them in conversation. On the walls hung enormous abstract paintings by American painters such as Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and Jules Olitski - most of them were colour-field painters operating with the approval of Clement Greenberg.  Polychromed metal constructions by Anthony Caro were regularly on display.  Figurative paintings by David Hockney made an appearance as well as a contingent of British abstract painters - Richard Smith, Robyn Denny, Bernard and Harold Cohen among them.  The gallery closed in 1972 and while Kasmin remained an active participant in the art world his star never again burned so brightly.  However, in the last decade he has re-emerged as an impresario of the vintage postcard and self-published a series of themed volumes (Trivia Press) reproducing some of the highlights of his collection.  Almost all the books bear a single word title (Want, Kids, Perform, Fish, Burden) although a few more recent have two word titles (News & Shoes, Music & Dance). Each card is described at the back of the book in a few well chosen words in a deadpan style. A long journey from the contemplation of the vast floating, disembodied colour clouds of Louis and Frankenthaler to the intense scrutiny of the visual compressions of the picture postcard.

As a collector, Kasmin operates at the top end of the market - not for him the pleasure of rummaging through mountains of boxes of mixed unsorted cards at four for a pound.  Examples with bumped or missing corners, unsightly postal cancellations, sinister stains, or misaligned printing have been passed over - only the most pristine and perfect have made it into the collection.  Deep pockets must have helped but most dealers whose stock I’m familiar with have no more than a few examples of this quality.  The impression from looking at the published examples is of a collection much closer to that of Leonard A Lauder (joint heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune) than to Tom Phillips’ demotic selection as seen in the Postcard Century.  New volumes continue to be added and thus far the focus has been on documentary or curiosity value, monochrome printing and a cut-off date around 1925.  It seems the collection extends to early illustrated cards and advertising but the full scope remains a mystery.  There are now more than twenty volumes in circulation, the latest of which were published in 2021.