Spotlight on … The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard (2012)

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‘Joe Brainard is one of those unclassifiable artists . . . who do several things well. In his case this resulted not in separate compartments but a unified whole . . . . The same qualities shine forth in all that he produced: clarity, bold simplicity, accuracy of execution and feeling, humor, casual elegance, a charm that invites his audience in rather than keeping them at arm’s length, and something grander but determinedly low key and offhand, a sense of the ordinary as sacramental.’ — Ron Padgett

‘[Brainard] seems to have been drawn to forms of containment, in which the unruly or rupturing experiences of life are brought into the kind of reductive clarity that we often associate with classical modalities . . . . Not surprisingly, along with this gift for distillation, Brainard had an uncanny eye for essential, revelatory detail; these contribute to the vivid immediacy and spontaneity of his work. In essence, such specific distillations can be understood as a form of abstraction, not the abstraction we affiliate with non-representational art, but something perhaps closer to the poetics we have come to associate with the New York School of poetry: an “aesthetics of attention” as critic Marjorie Perloff has said about its most important avatar, Frank O’Hara . . . . Distillation, specificity, and a keen sense of intimate scale allowed Brainard to locate the extraordinary in the ordinary and, curiously, something like the reverse.’ — Ann Lauterbach

‘Joe was a creature of incredible tact and generosity. He often gave his work to his friends, but before you could feel obliged to him he was already there, having anticipated the problem several moments or paragraphs earlier, and remedying it while somehow managing to deflect your attention from it. Into something else: a compassionate atmosphere, where looking at his pictures and recognizing their references and modest autobiographical aspirations would somehow make you a nicer person without realizing it and having to be grateful. It’s for this, I think, that his work is so radical, that we keep returning to it, again and again finding something that is new, bathing in its curative newness. Joe seems to have taken extraordinary pains for us not to know about his work. Either he would create 3,000 tiny works for a show, far too many to take in, or he would abandon art altogether, as he did for the last decade of his life, consecrating his time to his two favorite hobbies, smoking and reading Victorian novels. It’s as though in an ultimate gesture of niceness he didn’t wasn’t us to have the bother of bothering with him. Maybe that’s why the work today hits us so hard, sweeping all before it, our hesitations and his, putting us back in the place where we always wanted to be, the delicious chromatic center of the Parcheesi board.’ — John Ashbery

‘Joe Brainard was both a collector and an antimaterialist. He loved beautiful objects and bought them, but he loved emptiness more and was always giving away his collections and restoring his loft to its primordial spareness. As one of his closest friends told me, “He was like a teenager. It was difficult for him to live in the real world. He’d get rid of everything. His loft was Spartan-too much so. I remember at the end, when he was so ill, the nurse would have to kneel next to his mattress on the floor-it broke my heart.”‘ — Edmund White

 

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Listening

Joe Brainard reads from ‘I Remember’
JB reads ‘Van Gogh’
JB reads ‘Worry Wart’
JB reads ‘Today (Monday, February 23, 1981)’
JB reads ‘Scope’
JB reads ‘Breakfast Out’
JB reads ‘Sick Art’
JB reads ‘Tuesday, February 18th, 1971’
JB reads ‘The Fourth of July’
JB reads ‘Bird Life in Vermont’
JB reads ‘Minute Observation’
JB reads from ‘I Remember’

 

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Watching

I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard – trailer

Joe Brainard episode of ‘Public Secrets’

‘Bruno Lalonde, lectures dans ma bibliothèque: Joe Brainard’

A celebration of ‘White Dove Review’, co-edited by Joe Brainard

‘Nancy Is Happy’

A Tribute to Joe Brainard | The New School for Public Engagement

 

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Further

Joe Brainard Official Website
Re: ‘I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard’
Bruce Hainley on Joe Brainard @ Frieze
‘Homage to Joe’ by Keith McDermott
Book: Ron Padgett ‘Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard’
Joe Brainard’s Comix Collabs @ Els
ewhere
Book: Andy Fitch ‘Pop Poetics: Reframing Joe Brainard’
‘Joe Brainard’s Queer Seriousness’
‘Poetry and the artful presence of materials: Joe Brainard at P.S. 1’
Rachel Youens on the Joe Brainard Retrospective @ PS1
JOE / BRAINS / LAMAR
John Ashbery on Joe Brainard
‘He Fancied Nancy’ by Jordan Davis

 

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Ron Padgett interviewed about Joe Brainard

 

Even though you and Joe Brainard are often associated with the “New York School” of poetry and painting, respectively, your friendship dates back to your adolescence in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to know one another and how you ended up in New York City?

RON PADGETT: I met Joe in 1948. We were in the same first grade class. The next year I went to another school, and we didn’t reconnect until high school. He was the school artist and I was the school poet, therefore we were both “different.” We even published a little avant-garde magazine together, The White Dove Review. When I came to New York City in 1960 for college, Joe accompanied me, on a visit, before his art school started in Dayton, Ohio. But after a few months in Dayton he quit school and moved to New York for good. We remained good friends for the rest of his life. He was like a brother to me.

Talk a little about how you know Kenward Elmslie, and how he fits into the whole New York School scene. What was his relationship to Joe Brainard?

RP: I was already a big admirer of Kenward’s poetry when I met him in the spring of 1964. He was a friend of Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery and James Schuyler. Kenward had come to poetry by way of writing lyrics for songs and Broadway shows. I believe he met the New York School poets through John Latouche, who not only wrote Broadway shows himself but also held a glittering salon frequented by a variety of writers and performers, such as Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Paul and Jane Bowles, and Lena Horne. Latouche introduced Kenward to John Meyers, the Tibor de Nagy Gallery director who knew Kenneth, Frank, John and Jimmy. Kenward’s poetry readings, which include his singing, always make me feel that I’ve been to a mysterious, witty, moving show with big production values. Joe Brainard and Kenward were companions and collaborators for 30 years.

Joe Brainard collaborated on works with many of the New York School poets, including yourself, Kenward, John Ashbery, and Ted Berrigan. I wonder if you can talk about collaboration as an element in your work and as a means of working collectively with your peers. Is collaboration still an important part of what you do now that you’re a bit older?

RP: I’d say quite a bit older! I’m still doing collaborative works, after more than 40 years, now mainly with the painter George Schneeman. It’s as exciting and scary as ever, because we never quite know what we’re going to do until we do it, and then we can never figure out how we did it. It’s as if a hybrid of us forms a third person, the one who actually does the work. Having to work with an unpredictable collaborator has rubbed off on to the solo work I do. It has made me more open, more willing to take a risk, more trusting in whatever it is that makes us write poetry and make art.

Humor is another pronounced characteristic of a lot of New York School writing, especially in your work and Kenneth Koch’s, but also in O’Hara’s and Berrigan’s and Ashbery’s—and in Joe Brainard’s writing as well. Why do you think humor is such a crucial part of your work? Where does your sense of humor come from? Have you ever found it difficult to be taken seriously because there is so much humor in your work?

RP: I like to laugh, and I also like the kind of wit that makes my mind laugh. Humor is the nephew of happiness and optimism, without which life would be unbearable. My penchant for comedy probably started with my Ozark hillbilly grandparents, who had a spunky sense of humor. My dad, who was a bootlegger, was quite a prankster. And when I was a child I was crazy about comic books. There are some literary people who think that for poetry to be valuable and meaningful it must be utterly serious at all times. I don’t see why poetry can’t be as big and various as life itself, and that includes humor. And of course comedy can be serious in its own way, too.

I have two images of Joe Brainard in my mind. One is the Joe Brainard of his book I Remember, which is an image of a very lively, intelligent, sensitive person with a breezy sense of humor he deploys even when talking about the most difficult and trying events in his life. I see some of this person in his more pop-arty kind of visual work. But then his paintings and portraits and collages strike me as quite serious, almost despairing at times. I don’t know if you see it the same way, but I guess I am asking if you saw Joe as a person who tried his best to put on a pleasant face that may or may not have masked a kind of suffering he didn’t or couldn’t show to the world?

RP: At the age of 19, Joe wrote a diary entry in which he talked about this very question, concluding that he had “so much undressing to do.” (In my book Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard I quote from his diary.) By “undressing” he meant stripping down to one’s basic self and being honest, a mission he was true to for the rest of his life. Both his visual art and his writing range from the very funny to the very serious, but in all instances I think he tried to make beautiful art that was personal and even intimate. It’s a very friendly art that reflects Joe’s own sweetness and generosity, a generosity that led him to give the world all the beautiful works he made.

 

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20 artworks

 

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Book

Ron Padgett, ed. The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard
The Library of America

‘In New York’s vibrant art and poetry scenes of the 1960s and 70s, Joe Brainard occupied a special place. An artist of diverse and extraordinary gifts, he worked prolifically in a dazzling range of media, creating cover designs and interior art for some of the most significant books of the period and experimenting with the mixing of poetry and comic strips. The publication in 1970 of his one-of-a-kind autobiographical work I Remember showed that Brainard was also a writer of originality, grace, depth, and distinctive humor. I Remember has become a contemporary classic, of which the poet James Schuyler said: “It’s a great work that will last and last—in other words, it is literature.”

‘Here in one volume is the full range of Joe Brainard’s writing in all its deadpan wit, effortless inventiveness, personal candor, and generosity of spirit: the complete text of I Remember, along with an unprecedented gathering of intimate journals, stories, poems, travel diaries, one-liners, comic strips, mini-essays, and short plays, many of them until now available only in expensive, rare editions. Using apparently simple means to achieve complex and surprising effects, these works turn the most everyday experiences into occasions for startled contemplation. “Brainard disarms us with the seemingly tossed-off, spontaneous nature of his writing, and his stubborn refusal to accede to the pieties of self-importance,” writes Paul Auster in his introduction to this collection. “These little works … are not really about anything so much as what it means to be young, that hopeful, anarchic time when all horizons are open to us and the future appears to be without limits.”

‘Assembled by the author’s longtime friend and biographer Ron Padgett and presenting for the first time fourteen previously unpublished works, The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard provides long overdue recognition of a singular literary talent and a terrific person whom readers will come to love.’ — TLoA

 

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Excerpts

Death

Death is a funny thing. Most people are afraid of it, and yet
they don’t even know what it is.

Perhaps we can clear this up.

What is death?

Death is it. That’s it. Finished. “Finito.” Over and out. No
more.

Death is many different things to many different people. I
think it is safe to say, however, that most people don’t like it.

Why?

Because they are afraid of it.

Why are they afraid of it?

Because they don’t understand it.

I think that the best way to try to understand death is to
think about it a lot. Try to come to terms with it. Try to really
understand it. Give it a chance!

Sometimes it helps if we try to visualize things.

Try to visualize, for example, someone sneaking up behind
your back and hitting you over the head with a giant hammer.

Some people prefer to think of death as a more spiritual
thing. Where the soul somehow separates itself from the mess
and goes on living forever somewhere else. Heaven and hell being
the most traditional choices.

Death has a very black reputation but, actually, to die is a
perfectly normal thing to do.

And it’s so wholesome: being a very important part of
nature’s big picture. Trees die, don’t they? And flowers?

I think it’s always nice to know that you are not alone. Even
in death.

Let’s think about ants for a minute. Millions of ants die
every day, and do we care? No. And I’m sure that ants feel the
same way about us.

But suppose—just suppose—that we didn’t have to die.
That wouldn’t be so great either. If a 90-year-old man can hardly
stand up, can you imagine what it would be like to be 500 years
old?

Another comforting thought about death is that 80 years or
so after you die nobody who knew you will still be alive to miss
you.

And after you’re dead, you won’t even know it.

 

30 One-Liners

WINTER
More time is spent at the window.

SUMMER
You go along from day to day with summer all around you.

STORES
Stores tell all about people who live in the area.

WRITING
Others have already written what I would like to write.

TODAY
Today the sky is so blue it burns.

IN THE COUNTRY
In the country one can almost hear the silence.

THE FOUR SEASONS
The four seasons of the year permit us to enjoy things.

RECIPE
Smear each side of a pork chop with mustard and dredge in
flour.

BOOK WORM
Have always had nose stuck in book from little on.

THAT FEELING
What defines that feeling one has when gazing at a rock?

COSTA RICA
It was in Costa Rica I saw my first coffee plantation.

HAPPINESS
Happiness is nothing more than a state of mind.

MONEY
Money will buy a fine dog.

OUR GOVERNMENT
A new program is being introduced by our government.

EDWARD
On the whole he is a beautiful human being.

LAKE
A lake attracts a man and wife and members of a family.

THE SKY
We see so many different things when we look at the sky.

A SEXY THOUGHT
Male early in the day.

POTATOES
One can only go so far without potatoes in the kitchen.

MOTHER
A mother is something we have all had.

MODERN TIMES
Every four minutes a car comes off the assembly line they say.

THE OCEAN
Foamy waves wash to shore “treasures” as a sacrifice to damp
sand.

TODAY
High density housing is going on all around us.

REAL LIFE
I could have screamed the day John proposed winterizing
the cottage and living there permanently.

ALASKA
I am a very cold person here.

THE YEAR OF THE WHITE MAN
The year of the white man was a year of many beads.

LOYALTY
Loyalty, I feel, is a very big word.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
Perhaps in our mad scramble to keep our heads above water
we miss the point.

HUMAN NATURE
Why must we be so intent on destroying everything we
touch?

COMPANY
Winifred was a little relieved when they were gone.

 

Picnic or Yonder Comes the Blue

“After a white reception in the crystal room of the Hotel
Kenmore, Mrs. George Eustic (Patricia Hays) and her husband
left on a wedding trip to the Pocono Mountains, Pa. They will
live in good old Noodleville.” (Home.)

Where the friendly purple heart is.

I like to do things. I like to eat, and things like that. I like
the things that go on around me. People are nice. And, really, I
like this place I live in. However, some people don’t.

Sally doesn’t.

Sick at heart, the trembling girl shuddered at the words
that delivered her to this terrible horrible fate of the East.
“Nasty!” How could she escape from this oriental monster
into whose hands she had fallen—this strange man whose face
none had seen.

Smile!

It is only a little picture,
In a little silver frame,
And across the back is written
My darling mother’s name.
(Valentine)

Pink and purple and orange ones with Venetian rose buds
Imported from Venetian
In eleven thrilling volumes

I heard a shot—I saw him run—then I saw her fall—the
woman I love. My leg was broken—and my gun was gone! I had
only one thought—(tee! hee!)—his strange, astounding plots
must be avenged—he must die for a coward at my hands! He had
the courage of a lion and the cunning of a rat. He came running
towards me when—suddenly, I—

Ran.
Forgetting the ripped lace, $35, green violence, & free samples.

“I always run when I hear 3 rings!”

. . . and remember those swell picnics in Birch Grove?

 

29 Mini-Essays

PEOPLE

People are the most interesting books in the world.

THE BEACH BOYS

“The Beach Boys” are worth feeling old about liking.

AMBER

What few people seem to realize is that amber is just petrified tree sap.

T.V. DINNERS

Sometimes progress takes too big a bite and ends up with indigestion.

VAN GOGH

He dared look the sun in its face and steal its radiance.

OPTIMISM

Perhaps it is enough to know that nothing will ever be as it was before.

AMERICA

That a giant economy-sized box of “Supreme—Three Ply—Extra Soft—De Luxe” cleansing tissues only costs 39¢ ought, it would seem, to restore one’s faith in something.

MOTHER

A mother is something we have all had.

GIRL SCOUTS

Girl Scouts is more than selling cookies.

IMAGINATION

Imagination is the mother of reality.

PRIDE

Pride creates its own banana peels.

BREAD

Bread is the greatest loaf story in the world.

RECIPE

When in doubt, sprinkle with cheese and bake.

GARDEN

When in doubt, mulch.

FREUD

From Freud we learn that when a wife smashes a vase to the floor, it is really her husband’s head that lies there broken into many pieces.

THE ERA OF MIND

Geology, which is the story of the rocks, finds its climax in the history, which is the story of man… if you get my drift.

AUTUMN

Autumn gets the red out.

WOMEN’S LIB

A woman can do anything she puts her pants to.

PEOPLE

People who need people are the peopleish people in the world.

GARBAGE

As I was saying to my garbage on the way out the door the other night—“Why should I carry you down three flights of stairs? I don’t even like you!”

ON THE OTHER HAND

If you go to bed with your shoes on, you’ll save time in the morning.

EARLY ATHLETE’S FOOT

There is an old saying not to judge a man until you have walked in his moccasins for two moons.

YOU CAN’T LOSE FOR WINNING

He who would give his right arm to be a free man is a free man with one arm.

REMEMBRANCE OF WOMAN PAST

The echo of an interesting woman can be an ordinary scarf.

MOTIVATION

“Some day my prince will come…”

THE TRUTH

It may just be—you know—that “the truth” is far too obvious to risk any comprehension of.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

Would you believe a new Revlon fingernail polish called “Burnt Toast”!

HISTORY

What with history piling up so fast, almost every day is the anniversary of something awful.

PEOPLE

If I’m as normal as I think I am, we’re all a bunch of weirdos.
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p.s. Hey. ** Bernard Welt, Mr. Welt, hello! Well, at least I followed it up with a post that you know lots about. Diarmuid’s getting married? Toss a handful of rice at them for me please. Art finally chose the homestead. Good, or I’m pretty sure? Ah, so Paris is a near-year away then. Surely, Art will have had his temporary fill of you by then. Thanks for catching up the blog’s recent array. Be good, as will I be presumably. Love, me. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. I’m … a mixed bag today. I never played that game or used an Atari. I just liked the story. I was late to video games, in the 90s, starting with ‘Myst’-style PC stuff and then Nintendo pretty much from there on with the occasional XBox a friend would lend me. But I’d like to play that game. There must be an online simulator version? Of course I like Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi is kind of a genius. The Ellis novel is very good if you’re ever in that mood. Your day plans sound nice. I’m going to work and then go to a bookstore reading. At least in theory. We’ll see. I hope your day/night were as nice as your plans portended. ** Darbznoodlez 🧸🌹, Mm, noodles. My pal Zac just made me a bottle full of my favorite food: cold sesame noodles, which I am going to start devouring today. Everybody who was actually cool in the early 70s was into Glam Rock because it was the coolest thing. It was just a matter of whether you were into more trad stuff like Suzi Quatro or into the wild stuff like Roxy Music. I was into the latter, naturally, ha ha. Boys can’t be too feminine in my opinion. Good luck with the vow of silence. Seems wise under the circumstances. That 3-some offer is very Glam, btw. I like talking with you too. You have def passed my vibe check. The Russian doesn’t drink vodka, no. We never have any alcohol in the apartment, so I don’t think he drinks except maybe when out with friends. He drinks a lot of energy drinks though. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ha ha, I had a feeling that title might get to you. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks about the title. It’s almost slave worthy? You’re definitely not alone there. Sloths seem completely bewildering and amazing. Like experimental animals or something. The baby birds are silent as I type, so I guess they got their vomit breakfast. I’m like your love of yesterday unless a microwave counts as a kitchen. Love making me spend some of the loose change in my loose change jar, G. ** Jamie, Hi. You remember it. Uh, no, on the ‘Ghostbusters’ game. My PC game playing era was all about search and solve ‘Myst’-style games. My very strong suspicion is that the little voice in your head is just a scaredy cat and your novella is in fact ready for its final polish. Prove me right. But what’s the new project? We’ll edit again early next week for a bit, and then Zac goes to the States for a couple of weeks, so we’ll be desperately seeking funds and looking for pros to help us during that phase. The single little thing has makes ‘The Flash’ have any appeal to me at all is Michael Keaton’s Batman being in it because he was the only good Batman in my opinion. It’s supposed to get hot here tomorrow: ugh, no! Editing time off: mostly still film stuff like finding money and tech wizzes willing to work with us cheap, and then ideally seeing stuff, friends, maybe working on my dormant short fiction book-ette if I can. Your agenda? Weather forecast failure love, me. ** A, A little sun peeking through the clouds is okay. Yep, LA in September will not be Antarctica, no. Up with me? Mostly trying not to have murderous thoughts about someone. Art: I saw the Ron Mueck show at Fondation Cartier, and it was absolutely vapid garbage. Week’s plan is film-planning stuff and seeing friends and more art and a movie or two and writing. I don’t think I really rest. Yours? ** Steve Erickson, Hi. No, I can’t say that Coover had any influence on my gif novels. I’ll watch ‘Duality’ then for sure. Sure, happy to share whatever I remember about the early 80s music scene. You played the E.T. game, wow. Pretty cool. ** Mark, You played the E.T. game too, wow again. I don’t know why that impresses me, but it does. Thanks a lot for the further London tips. I might even have a really good time in London, which I almost never do. Gotcha, about Sky Daddies. Curious. Another book I obviously need to get, thanks. You’re super-filling my coffers. Thanks a lot, man. Have an eccentric day. ** Nasir, It used to happen a lot. Your day doesn’t sound a whole lot different than my yesterday. Sync! There must be a way to rock and fuck hard, and, damn it, I’m going to find out how. You too, okay? The blog does make this little ‘beep’ sound when I launch a post, so maybe you have really sonic ears like dogs supposedly do? So, good morning whatever time it is. ** Misanthrope, All the luck in the world to your mom and you guys today. When we were shooting the film, a few of us took a 7-hour round trip drive to Nevada and bought about $300 worth of fireworks. There are still some left, but of course I couldn’t take them on the plane, so they’re in a closet in LA. ** chas, Hi, chas! Awesome to meet you! ‘Confessions of a Mask’ was really big for me when I was younger. I did do a blog post about it. Hold on for second. Yeah, here. Thank you for the cool words about my stuff. That’s really nice to hear. Yes, please drop in whenever you want to. Tell me more about you and what you do, for instance? Or just say hi, if you want. Whatever’s good. A pleasure to talk with you. ** Right. Today the blog focuses its everything on a book containing the writings of the great and sublime Joe Brainard. Consider becoming a Brainardhead if you aren’t already. See you tomorrow.