Joe Brainard was an American artist and writer associated with the New York School. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, 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 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 said: "It is... one of the few totally original books I have ever read."
Life
Joe Brainard was born March 11, 1942, in Salem, Arkansas, and spent his childhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is the brother of painter John Brainard. Brainard became friends with Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup, and Ted Berrigan 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. By 1964, Brainard had already had his first solo exhibition and was ensconced in a circle of friends that included Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Alex Katz, Edwin Denby, Larry Rivers, Fairfield Porter, James Schuyler, Jane Freilicher, Virgil Thomson, John Ashbery, among many others. He also began a relationship with Kenward Elmslie 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-induced pneumonia 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, none more notable than OuLiPian Georges Perec's Je me souviens which was dedicated to Brainard. Poet Kenneth Koch was the first to utilize I Remember in the classroom as a prompt in teaching children to write poetry. The simplicity of the form has had great appeal to both writers and teachers, and most who use it are unaware of its origins. In 1998 filmmaker Avi Zev Weider premiered his short film I Remember at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, an adaptation of Brainard's book, went on to play over 25 film festivals worldwide. Novelist Paul Auster was the Executive Producer on the film. The film stars John Cameron Mitchell and Liam Aiken. In 2012 filmmaker Matt Wolf released the short I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard using archival film footage and recordings of Brainard's readings. In 2014 Mexican author Margo Glantz wrote Yo también me acuerdo.
1984 Comics, 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
