Joe Brainard

The first major publication in twenty years on the prodigious and innovative work of this beloved 20th-century New York multi-media artist and poet whose work in collage and assemblage transformed the ordinary into the beautiful.

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Known for his internationally popular memoir, I Remember, 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entire range of his versatile art, including hundreds of drawings, collages, assemblages, prints, and paintings, many unpublished or never exhibited.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 Joe Brainard s unabashed affection for the world.