Joe Brainard (March 11, 1942 – May 25, 1994) was an American artist and writer associated with the New York School. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages,

collages Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an Assemblage (art), assemblage of different forms, thus creat ...

, drawing, and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes. In particular, Brainard broke new ground in using

comics a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate ...

as a poetic medium in his collaborations with other New York School poets. He is best known for his memoir '' I Remember'', of which

Paul Auster Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include ''The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), ''The Music of Chance'' (1990), '' The Book of Illusions'' (2002), '' The B ...

said: "It is ... one of the few totally original books I have ever read."

Life

Joe Brainard was born on March 11, 1942, in Salem, Arkansas, and spent his childhood in

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region wit ...

. He is the brother of painter John Brainard. Brainard became friends with

Ron Padgett Ron Padgett (born June 17, 1942, Tulsa, Oklahoma) is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. ''Great Balls of Fire'', Padgett's first full-length collection of poems, was published in 1969. He ...

Dick Gallup Dick Gallup (July 3, 1941 – January 27, 2021) was an American poet associated with the New York School. Early life and education Richard "Dick" John Gallup was born on July 3, 1941, in Greenfield, Massachusetts. In late 1949, the Gallup famil ...

, and

Ted Berrigan Ted Berrigan (November 15, 1934 – July 4, 1983) was an American poet. Early life Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army. After ...

during high school while working on the literary journal ''The White Dove Review'', which was printed five times during 1959/1960. The 18-year-old Brainard joined the journal as its art editor after fellow Central High classmate Padgett sent Brainard an anonymous Christmas card praising his work. After high school, the artist re-united with the ''White Dove'' boys in New York City shortly after leaving the

Dayton Art Institute The Dayton Art Institute (DAI) is a museum of fine arts in Dayton, Ohio, United States. The Dayton Art Institute has been rated one of the top 10 best art museums in the United States for children. The museum also ranks in the top 3% of all art mus ...

.Padgett, Ron. (2004).
Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard
''. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press.Kline, Joshua. (2010)
''The White Dove Review: How a Group of Tulsa Teens Created a Literary Legend''
This Land Press. By 1964, Brainard had already had his first solo exhibition and was ensconced in a circle of friends that included

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

Kenneth Koch Kenneth Koch ( ; 27 February 1925 – 6 July 2002) was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77. He was a prominent poet of the New York School of poetry. This was a loose group of poets includ ...

Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Early life and career Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ...

, Edwin Denby,

Larry Rivers Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg) (1923 – 2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists ...

Fairfield Porter Fairfield Porter (June 10, 1907 – September 18, 1975) was an American painter and art critic. He was the fourth of five children of James Porter, an architect, and Ruth Furness Porter, a poet from a literary family. He was the brother of photo ...

James Schuyler James Marcus Schuyler (November 9, 1923 – April 12, 1991) was an American poet. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection ''The Morning of the Poem''. He was a central figure in the New York School and is of ...

Jane Freilicher Jane Freilicher (November 19, 1924 – December 9, 2014) was an American representational painter of urban and country scenes from her homes in lower Manhattan and Water Mill, Long Island. She was a member of the informal New York School beginni ...

Virgil Thomson Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclass ...

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

, among many others. He also began a relationship with

Kenward Elmslie Kenward Gray Elmslie (April 27, 1929 – June 29, 2022) was an American author, performer, editor and publisher associated with the New York School of poetry. Life and career Kenward Gray Elmslie was born to William and Constance Pulitzer in M ...

which lasted much of his life, despite having other lovers. He found much success as an artist, until he removed himself from the art-world in the early 1980s. He devoted the last years of his life to reading. Brainard died of

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ma ...

-induced

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...

on May 25, 1994.

Works

Visual and literary work

Brainard began his career during the early Pop Art era, and while his work has a certain affinity with Pop Art, it does not fit the definition of the genre: The inimitability of Brainard's work is located partly in its resistance to categorization, in its breadth, and in its rapport with and awe of the quotidian: Particularly in the collages, drawings and small works on paper, Brainard transformed the everyday into something revelatory:

''I Remember''

Joe Brainard's '' I Remember'' radically departs from the conventions of the traditional memoir. His deft juxtapositions of the banal with the revelatory, the very particular with the apparently universal accumulate into a complex depiction of his childhood in the 1940s and '50s in Oklahoma as well as his life in the '60s and '70s in New York City. ''I Remember'' has inspired many homages and adaptations.

Publications

* ''I Remember'' (Angel Hair, 1970) ** ''I Remember More'' (Angel Hair, 1972) ** ''More I Remember More'' (Angel Hair, 1973) ** ''I Remember Christmas'' (Museum of Modern Art, 1973) ** ''I Remember'' (first collected edition, Full Court Press, 1975) ** ''I Remember'' (new edition, Penguin, 1995) ** ''I Remember'' (new edition, Granary Books, 2001, 4th printing 2005) * ''Selected Writings'' (Kulchur, 1971) * ''Bolinas Journal'' (Big Sky, 1971) * ''Some Drawings of Some Notes to Myself'' (Siamese Banana, 1971) * ''The Cigarette Book'' (Siamese Banana, 1972) * ''The Banana Book'' (Siamese Banana, 1972) * ''The Friendly Way'' (Siamese Banana, 1972) * ''New Work'' (Black Sparrow, 1973) * ''12 Postcards'' (Z Press, 1975) * ''29 Mini-Essays'' (Z Press, 1978) * ''24 Pictures & Some Words'' (BLT, 1980) * ''Nothing to Write Home About'' (Little Caesar, 1981) * ''Ten Imaginary Still Lifes'' (Boke Press, 1995) * ''The Nancy Book'' (Siglio Press, 2008) * ''The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard'' (Library of America, 2012)

Collaborative work

* ''Some Things'' (C Press, New York, 1964), with Ron Padgett and Ted Berrigan * ''The Baby Book'' (Boke Press, 1965), with Kenward Elmslie * ''Bean Spasms'' (Kulchur, 1967) with Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett * ''The 1967 Game Calendar'' (Boke Press, 1967), with Kenward Elmslie * ''100,000 Fleeing Hilda'' (Boke Press, 1967), with Ron Padgett * ''The Drunken Boat'' (privately printed, nd), with Ted Berrigan * ''The Champ'' (Black Sparrow, 1968), with Kenward Elmslie * ''Album'' (Kulchur, 1969), with Kenward Elmslie * ''Recent Visitors'' (Best & Co./Boke Press, 1971), with Bill Berkson * ''Neil Young'' (The Coach House Press, 1971), with Tom Clark * ''Sufferin' Succotash/Kiss My Ass'' (Adventures in Poetry, 1971), with Ron Padgett/Michael Brownstein) * ''Self-Portrait'' (Siamese Banana, 1972) with Anne Waldman * ''Shiny Ride'' (Boke Press, 1972), with Kenward Elmslie * ''The Class of '47'' (Bouwerie Editions, 1973; SUNY Buffalo Art Gallery, 2007), with Robert Creeley * ''The Vermont Notebook'' (1975), with John Ashbery * ''I Love You, de Kooning'' (Bolinas, Calif.: Yanagi Broadside late 1970s), with Bill Berkson * ''1984 Comics'' (Marz Verlag, 1983), collaborations with Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Michael Brownstein, Kenward Elmslie, Larry Fagin, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Harry Mathews, Frank O'Hara, Ron Padgett, Peter Schjeldahl, James Schuyler, and Tony Towle * ''Sung Sex'' (Kulchur, 1989), with Kenward Elmslie * ''Pay Dirt'' (Bamberger Books, 1992), with Kenward Elmslie

Solo exhibitions

''Selected Collections'' include Berkeley Art Museum, Chase Manhattan Bank, Baron Guy de Rothschild, Fogg Museum, Harvard; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum, Time-Life, Inc,. Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. The Mandeville Special Collections Library at UCSD also has a large archive of works by and about Brainard collected by Robert Butts from 1960 to 1992.''Register of the Joe Brainard Archiv

' In the Mandeville Special Collections Library archives (accessed 1/20/2011). His work in theater included set designs for Frank O'Hara's ''The General Returns from One Place to Another'' and

LeRoi Jones Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous bo ...

's ''The Baptism''. Brainard also did sets and costumes for the

Louis Falco Louis Falco (August 2, 1942 – March 26, 1993) was an American dancer and choreographer. Life and career Louis Falco was born in New York City of southern Italian immigrant parents. He began his study of dance in the 1950s at The Henry Street ...

Dance Troupe and the Joffrey Ballet Company.

References

Sources consulted

*Briefly noted i
''The New Yorker''
84/35 (3 November 2008): 111

Notes

External links

Official Website of Joe Brainard

I Remember Joe Brainard
(2012; video remembrances by Bill Berkson,

Brad Gooch Brad Gooch (born 1952) is an American writer. Biography Born and raised in Kingston, Pennsylvania, he graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in 1973 and a doctorate in 1986. Gooch has lived in New York City since 1971. His 2 ...

Robert Pinsky Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most o ...

, Edmund White, and others) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brainard, Joe 1942 births 1994 deaths American artists American gay writers LGBT people from Arkansas LGBT people from Oklahoma Gay artists New York School poets Writers from New York (state) AIDS-related deaths in New York (state) People from Greenwich Village American LGBT poets 20th-century American poets American male poets 20th-century American male writers 20th-century LGBT people