Overview

An artist and writer whose charming and inventive works are at once modest and ambitious, Joe Brainard was one of the most distinctive figures on New York City's vibrant cultural scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Widely known for his influential experimental memoir, I Remember, Brainard worked in a variety of forms, from New York School–aligned poetry to Pop Art–adjacent artworks, including wild riffs on the comic strip character Nancy. His art drew on the everyday and popular culture, exuding a sense of amiability, wit, and generosity. Love, Joe presents a selection of Brainard's letters stretching from 1959 to 1993, offering an intimate view of his personal and artistic life. They allow readers to witness an extraordinarily fertile moment in New York's history, when literary and visual arts intersected with happenings, proto-punk and psychedelic rock concerts, and experimental music and dance performances. Brainard's letters to his partner, Kenward Elmslie, and others also open a window onto the transformations of queer life during this period. His correspondents include poet and artist friends such as John Ashbery, Anne Waldman, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Fairfield Porter, Ron Padgett, Bernadette Mayer, James Schuyler, Alex Katz, and Andy Warhol, as well as lovers, patrons, high school friends, and fans. At once an insider's view of the art and literary worlds and a revelation of Brainard's creative process, these letters invite readers to share in his radical but gentle candor, his open-mindedness, and a sophisticated naiveté that helped him erase the conventional barriers between art and life.

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9780231203425

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Reviews

Joe Brainard was the sweetest person I've ever known, and that sweetness radiates from these letters, which are also an essential record of New York's painters and poets from the 1960s to the 1990s. Famous for his writing in I Remember and for his thousands of beautiful collages, Joe was a passionate, original spirit, gifted with a serious naiveté. -- Edmund White, author of <i>The Humble Lover</i> Readers of Joe Brainard’s masterpiece I Remember wish they could have known him, and this book is the next best thing. Here is the same sharp, funny, openhearted, and utterly authentic Joe, in letters brimming with original insights about art, culture and creativity, love and friendship, and the simple but profound joys of everyday life. -- Sigrid Nunez, author of <i>The Friend</i> I read Love, Joe with great pleasure. A vibrant portrait of Brainard—charming, passionate, frank, antiheroic—emerges from these letters as we follow his artistic development and at the same time enter his social and cultural world, peopled by artists and writers formative not only to Brainard’s times but also to our own. Utterly engrossing. -- Lydia Davis, author of <i>Our Strangers: Stories</i> We all know that Joe Brainard was a great artist, but fewer know that he possessed an exceptional talent for friendship. He kept up with a wide circle of brilliant pals. The letters gathered here, like his art, are intimate, newsy, affectionate, homoerotic, hilarious, and addictive, and they offer a fascinating portrait of a kid from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who became a prince of the New York art world. -- Deborah Solomon, author of <i>Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell</i> Sometimes published correspondence is uncomfortably revealing, but Joe Brainard's shows that he actually was kind, sweet, funny, generous, humble, intuitive, brilliant, and openhearted. The book's deft editing strategy, which clusters his letters to one friend at a time, shows all sides of his personality. Some friends are great for gossip; others get to the core of his art. At no time is he ever less than engaging. This is a rare compilation of letters you will read from one end to the other. -- Lucy Sante, author of <i>I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition</i> Friendship itself may have been the artist and writer Joe Brainard's most important medium. This delightful collection, expertly curated and framed by Daniel Kane, offers an irresistible portrait of not only Brainard's own amiable aesthetic but also the entire queer artistic milieu his galvanizing and optimistic presence helped make possible. Again and again, these letters demonstrate Brainard's surprising intelligence and insight, his rare combination of ambition and humility, and his compassionate embrace of his own imperfect life. Readers are sure to find a new appreciation of why everyone seemed to love Joe. -- Brian Glavey, author of <i>The Wallflower Avant-Garde: Modernism, Sexuality, and Queer Ekphrasis</i>

Joe Brainard was the sweetest person I've ever known, and that sweetness radiates from these letters, which are also an essential record of New York's painters and poets from the 1960s to the 1990s. Famous for his writing in I Remember and for his thousands of beautiful collages, Joe was a passionate, original spirit, gifted with a serious naiveté. -- Edmund White, author of <i>The Humble Lover</i> Friendship itself may have been the artist and writer Joe Brainard's most important medium. This delightful collection, expertly curated and framed by Daniel Kane, offers an irresistible portrait not only of Brainard's own amiable aesthetic, but of the entire queer artistic milieu his galvanizing and optimistic presence helped make possible. Again and again, these letters demonstrate Brainard's surprising intelligence and insight, his rare combination of ambition and humility, and his compassionate embrace of his own imperfect life. Readers are sure to find a new appreciation of why everyone seemed to love Joe. -- Brian Glavey, author of The <i>Wallflower Avant-Garde: Modernism, Sexuality, and Queer Ekphrasis</i>

Author Information

Joe Brainard (1942–1994) was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and moved to New York City in 1960. He was a prolific writer and artist across media, including paintings, collages, assemblages, and comic-strip collaborations with poets. His I Remember has been translated into fifteen languages, and his artworks are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and many others. He died from AIDS-related pneumonia. Daniel Kane is a professor of American literature at Uppsala University. His books include All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (2003); We Saw the Light: Conversations Between the New American Cinema and Poetry (2009); and “Do You Have a Band?”: Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City (Columbia, 2017).

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