Joe Brainard: The Art of the Personal

by John Yau

The first major publication in twenty years on the prodigious and innovative work of this beloved twentieth-century New York multimedia artist and poet, whose work in collage and assemblage transformed the ordinary into the beautiful.

Known for his internationally popular memoir, I Remember, which uniquely captures 1950s America, Joe Brainard (1942-1994) was also a prolific and beloved artist. This beautifully illustrated book covers the entire range of his versatile art, including hundreds of drawings, collages, assemblages, prints, and paintings, many unpublished or never exhibited.

Brainard was closely associated with the New York School, a community of poets and artists such as Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Alex Katz, Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Fairfield Porter, who thrived in downtown Manhattan in the 1960s and '70s. Brainard transformed ordinary objects and ephemera collected from his Lower East Side neighborhood into stunning assemblages and collages. The book brings together Brainard's classic subjects, such as the comic strip heroine Nancy; Madonnas (inspired by Ukrainian images in the Lower East Side); his iconic pansies, poppies, and daisies; and erotic works (male torsos).

Poet and art critic John Yau describes in vivid detail how Brainard produced thousands of lush multimedia pieces radiant with poignancy, wit, intimacy, and a sheer beauty that express Brainard's unabashed affection for the world.

Genres: Art

240 pages, Hardcover

Published October 11, 2022

About the author

John Yau is an American poet and critic who lives in New York City. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978. He has published over 50 books of poetry, artists' books, fiction, and art criticism.

Reviews

[Priscilla]

If you are a Joe Brainard fan, this book is a must see and drool over. I dove in and started reading the text. To be honest, for this reader, the text chafes at times. Yau is not shy on superlatives ("few figures in the twentieth century are anywhere near as dexterous as Brainard..." "[Brainard] achieved an unparalleled place..."--one pops up on every other page) and his central analytic trope is contrasting Brainard's work to his contemporaries (Warhol, Jasper Johns, et al) with JB always coming out on top. Now, I do like Brainard better than Warhol, but the way Yau goes about the compare-and-contrast strikes me as un-Brainard-like. However, the chronology in the last section includes certain details I have read nowhere else, details that mean a lot to me. And the plates of art here--this is a first-publication for many. I just keep looking, and looking. I am grateful for the time and effort and care that Yau put in to building this visual feast. He successfully got a lot of people to collaborate and cooperate. This would please Joe Brainard, no end.