Joe Brainard

BRAINARD, Joe

American, 20th century, male.

Born 1942, in Salem (Arkansas); died 25 May 1994.

Draughtsman, painter, graphic artist, assemblage artist, illustrator, set designer.

Joe Brainard was born in Salem but grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his family had moved when he was still a young boy. His father was an amateur painter and draughtsman and his grandfather a poet, and Brainard's artistic talent showed early when he began winning local competitions. In high school he met the aspiring poets Ron Padgett and Dick Gallup, with whom he founded The White Dove Review (). He went on to study at the University of Tulsa. In 1960 he attended the Dayton Art Institute for a short while before moving to New York, where he met a new generation of artists and writers, amongst others, Frank O'Hara (for whom he later designed theatre sets), Alex Katz, Fairfield Porter, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, whose work became an important early influence. He also met his life-long partner Kenward Elmslie.

His early work included collages incorporating industrial design in the shape of shampoo bottles, logos, toys, clocks, packaging, price tags or costume jewellery. He strove to capture beauty in his works, such as his colourful flower paintings of pansies painted to emphasise each detail. His work has a wide appeal due to its decorative qualities, its bright colours and its often humorous intent. Brainard was also a writer and showed the same attention to his immediate environment in his written works, such as in his most important piece I Remember. He died of AIDS-induced pneumonia in 1994.

His first show was held in 1964 at the Finch College Museum. This was followed by his first solo exhibition at the Alan Gallery in 1965, a large number of group shows and more solo exhibitions at the Landau-Alan and Fischbach galleries. His first retrospective, which included work from 1960 to 1970, took place at the Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago in 1970. In 1975 he showed an exhibition of 1500 miniature works, each one adding to the overall narrative of everyday life. The exhibition Joe Brainard: A Retrospective took place at the Berkeley Art Museum in 2001.

Retrieved from:

"BRAINARD, Joe." Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed August 7, 2017, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/benezit/B00300091.