Ink and gouache on paper for Kenward Elmslie’s collaborative volume Sung Sex (Kulchur Foundation, 1989), for which Brainard — his longtime companion – did sixty-five drawings, one for each poem. Work accomplished in 1988, signed and dated lower right, 1990. Numbered 120 to sheet verso, the work is reproduced in the book on page 118. 8.5 x 11 inches; 21.5. x 28 cm. Fine.
Born in Arkansas in 1942 and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Brainard moved to New York City in late 1960. A writer and an artist, he became associated with the New York School circle of poets. Brainard’s work often takes the form of small-scaled drawings and collages appropriating popular imagery and found materials but embracing joy and intimacy rather being marked by the cold distance commonly found in Pop art. As Liz Brown writes, “for all the comic book and commodity influence—from Nancy cartoons to Tareyton cigarettes—Brainard’s images are more giddy than ironic, more impromptu than polished.”
Made in the last years of his life, about a decade after he decided to stop exhibiting, the present work depicts a postcard layered on top of an envelope in a nod to the 19th century trompe l'oeil genre. Only suggestions of the addressee's names and addresses are visible ("Tom...New York, NY"), not enough visible to even say if they are "to" the same person. And, interestingly, the postcard begins "Dear Joe," though apparently not addressed to him on the associated address panel. Only a few choice words, seemingly shaped more carefully by design, are fully legible beyond this: "Never...Fuck You....Slut...Face."
"Though overflowing with gay signifiers, [Brainard’s work] short-circuits any tidy notion or classification of a “gay” aesthetic… Even when Brainard’s images border on being twee, they never slip into outright mawkishness. The artist always made a habit of slipping razors into his frosting." (Nicholas Chittaden Morgan, Artforum, Critic’s Picks, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, April 20, 2019 – May 26, 2019)
Brainard’s first retrospective, consisting of work from 1960-1970, took place at the Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago in 1970. In the mid-1970s he created over 3,000 miniature collages, paintings, and drawings for a major show at the Fischbach Gallery in Manhattan. Brainard published more than a dozen books, including the prose-poem memoir series I Remember (1975) and The Nancy Book (2008). One of Brainard’s most frequent collaborators was his longtime partner, the writer Kenward Elmslie. Of a possible gay slant to his work, Brainard once wrote, “Actually—I can’t see that being a gay painter makes any difference whatsoever, except that every now and then my work seems shockingly ‘sissy’ to me.”
From the collection of Frank Bidart, who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, and the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry for his book Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016. Perhaps Bidart's most celebrated poem, "The Second Hour of the Night," is partly based on his relationship with Brainard. "The relationship was," as Bidart has said, both "more than friendship and less than a romance." His "In Memory of Joe Brainard" is a profound elegy for his friend who died of AIDS-induced pneumonia in 1994.
Ink and gouache on paper for Kenward Elmslie’s collaborative volume Sung Sex (Kulchur Foundation, 1989), for which Brainard — his longtime companion – did sixty-five drawings, one for each poem. Work accomplished in 1988, signed and dated lower right, 1990. Numbered 120 to sheet verso, the work is reproduced in the book on page 118. 8.5 x 11 inches; 21.5. x 28 cm. Fine.
Born in Arkansas in 1942 and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Brainard moved to New York City in late 1960. A writer and an artist, he became associated with the New York School circle of poets. Brainard’s work often takes the form of small-scaled drawings and collages appropriating popular imagery and found materials but embracing joy and intimacy rather being marked by the cold distance commonly found in Pop art. As Liz Brown writes, “for all the comic book and commodity influence—from Nancy cartoons to Tareyton cigarettes—Brainard’s images are more giddy than ironic, more impromptu than polished.”
Made in the last years of his life, about a decade after he decided to stop exhibiting, the present work depicts a postcard layered on top of an envelope in a nod to the 19th century trompe l'oeil genre. Only suggestions of the addressee's names and addresses are visible ("Tom...New York, NY"), not enough visible to even say if they are "to" the same person. And, interestingly, the postcard begins "Dear Joe," though apparently not addressed to him on the associated address panel. Only a few choice words, seemingly shaped more carefully by design, are fully legible beyond this: "Never...Fuck You....Slut...Face."
"Though overflowing with gay signifiers, [Brainard’s work] short-circuits any tidy notion or classification of a “gay” aesthetic… Even when Brainard’s images border on being twee, they never slip into outright mawkishness. The artist always made a habit of slipping razors into his frosting." (Nicholas Chittaden Morgan, Artforum, Critic’s Picks, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, April 20, 2019 – May 26, 2019)
Brainard’s first retrospective, consisting of work from 1960-1970, took place at the Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago in 1970. In the mid-1970s he created over 3,000 miniature collages, paintings, and drawings for a major show at the Fischbach Gallery in Manhattan. Brainard published more than a dozen books, including the prose-poem memoir series I Remember (1975) and The Nancy Book (2008). One of Brainard’s most frequent collaborators was his longtime partner, the writer Kenward Elmslie. Of a possible gay slant to his work, Brainard once wrote, “Actually—I can’t see that being a gay painter makes any difference whatsoever, except that every now and then my work seems shockingly ‘sissy’ to me.”
From the collection of Frank Bidart, who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, and the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry for his book Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016. Perhaps Bidart's most celebrated poem, "The Second Hour of the Night," is partly based on his relationship with Brainard. "The relationship was," as Bidart has said, both "more than friendship and less than a romance." His "In Memory of Joe Brainard" is a profound elegy for his friend who died of AIDS-induced pneumonia in 1994.