Joe Brainard

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."

Joe Brainard studied at Central High School. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are New York City. Work by Joe Brainard is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Whitney Museum of American Art.

• Name — Joe Brainard • Born — 11 March 1942 • Birthplace — Salem, Arkansas, US • Died — 25 May 1994 • Place of death — New York City, US • Known for — Artist, writer • Training — Dayton Art Institute • Movement — New York School

Joe Brainard was born on March 11, 1942, in Salem, Arkansas, spent his childhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and moved to New York City in 1960. 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 on May 25, 1994.

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 and adaptations. As the poet and critic Geoffrey O'Brien wrote in The New York Review of Books, I Remember "revealed [Brainard] as the inventor of an altogether new sort of book. The work eventually became globally popular and a widely used text for writing workshops."

• Some Things (C Press, New York, 1964), with Ron Padgett and Ted Berrigan • The Baby Book (Boke Press, 1965), with Kenward Elmslie • Bean Spasms (Kulchur, 1967) with Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett • The 1967 Game Calendar (Boke Press, 1967), with Kenward Elmslie • 100,000 Fleeing Hilda (Boke Press, 1967), with Ron Padgett • The Drunken Boat (privately printed, nd), with Ted Berrigan • The Champ (Black Sparrow, 1968), with Kenward Elmslie • Album (Kulchur, 1969), with Kenward Elmslie • Recent Visitors (Best & Co./Boke Press, 1971), with Bill Berkson • Neil Young (The Coach House Press, 1971), with Tom Clark • Sufferin' Succotash/Kiss My Ass (Adventures in Poetry, 1971), with Ron Padgett/Michael Brownstein) • Self-Portrait (Siamese Banana, 1972) with Anne Waldman • Shiny Ride (Boke Press, 1972), with Kenward Elmslie • The Class of '47 (Bouwerie Editions, 1973; SUNY Buffalo Art Gallery, 2007), with Robert Creeley • The Vermont Notebook (1975), with John Ashbery • I Love You, de Kooning (Bolinas, Calif.: Yanagi Broadside late 1970s), with Bill Berkson • 1984 Comics (Marz Verlag, 1983), 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 • Sung Sex (Kulchur, 1989), with Kenward Elmslie • Pay Dirt (Bamberger Books, 1992), with Kenward Elmslie

• 2022 — a box of hearts and other works, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York • 2019 — 100 Works, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York • 2012 — Painting the Way I Wish I Could Talk, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York • 2008 — The Nancys, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York The Nancys, Colby College, Waterville, ME • 2007 — The Erotic Work, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York Joe Brainard: People of the World: Relax! UBA Art Galleries, Buffalo, NY "If Nancy Was...", Fischbach Gallery, NY • 2005 — 35 Pictures and Some Words, Brazos Project, Houston, TX • 2004 — Selected Work, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York • 2001 — Joe Brainard: A Retrospective, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; traveled to Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, University of Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV Selected Work, Tibor de Nagy, New York • 1997 — A Retrospective, Tibor de Nagy, New York • 1987 — Mandeville Gallery, University of California, San Diego, CA • 1980 — Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA • 1978 — Joe Brainard: Fête d'Hiver, Root Art Center, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY • 1976 — FIAC, Paris, France Coventry Gallery, Paddington, Australia Suzette Schochett Gallery, Newport, RI E.G. Gallery, Kansas City, KS Vick Gallery, Philadelphia, PA • 1975 — Fischbach Gallery, New York; also 1974, 1972 and 1971 • 1973 — 102 Works on Paper, 1966–1972, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT • 1972 — New York Cultural Center, New York School of Visual Arts, New York • 1971 — Gotham Book Mart and Gallery, New York; also 1968 • 1970 — Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, IL • 1969 — Landau-Alan Gallery, New York; also 1967 • 1968 — Jerold-Morris Gallery, Toronto, Canada • 1965 — The Alan Gallery, New York Selected Collections include Berkeley Art Museum, Chase Manhattan Bank, Baron Guy de Rothschild, Fogg Museum, Harvard; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum, Time-Life, Inc,. Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. The Mandeville Special Collections Library at UCSD also has a large archive of works by and about Brainard collected by Robert Butts from 1960 to 1992. His work in theater included set designs for Frank O'Hara's The General Returns from One Place to Another and LeRoi Jones's The Baptism. Brainard also did sets and costumes for the Louis Falco Dance Troupe and the Joffrey Ballet Company.

Joe Brainard is recorded with the occupation illustrator. Recorded with the occupation painter. Recorded with the occupation writer. Recorded with the occupation artist. Recorded with the occupation poet. Recorded as poet, artist, painter, writer and illustrator.