The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard: Library of America Special Edition

by Ron Padgett

  JB: Frank O’Hara I met the first time on the street. We already had started C magazine—Ted and Ron and I, but it was mainly Ted. And he was a big fan of . . . we were all big fans of Frank and Ashbery and Koch and Kenward and that group. So we were walking down the street with Ron and Ted, and Ted had just gotten a poem accepted in the first or second issue of Locus Solus, so he was in fifth heaven, this was his first recognition from the peers. So we were walking down the street and Ted said, “There’s Frank O’Hara.” So we ran up and stopped him and told him how great we thought he was. So, somehow we got invited to a party in Larry Rivers’ loft in the Chelsea Hotel in the very top—he had this incredible place. And that’s where I met Joe LeSueur, who I thought was absolutely a dreamboat. He sort of reminded me of football players in high school, the sort of short, blond football players—sort of short and chunky. I couldn’t believe he was Frank O’Hara’s lover, he looked so straight to me. So I instantly had a crush on him. Then, through Tony Towle, who had gotten involved in C magazine . . . he was looking for someone to share Frank O’Hara and Joe LeSueur’s old place, they were moving to a loft. So Tony and I took their old place, and we lived together for a couple of years. Tony was a good friend of Frank’s, and they liked to play bridge. I didn’t know how to play bridge, but I learned how to play bridge. (Both laugh.) So we all four played bridge a lot. It took me a long time before I got together with Joe. I always thought Frank and Joe were lovers, but then when I found out they were just living together—they had been lovers, but they weren’t—so then I was instantly after Joe. It had been going on for a long time, and was very embarrassing to everyone, until one night we were all watching T.V., and Frank said he was tired, so why didn’t we take the T.V. into Joe’s room. It was all a set-up, of course. Anyway, Joe and I ended up in bed, watching T.V., and made it. So we started a big affair. I used to be there all the time; I used to go over there every night. That’s how I got to know Frank. I sort of got closer to Frank a lot later, but everyone did at one point or another. It was inevitable. He sort of expected it. When I was there, he’d go to bed with somebody different every night, and a lot of the time with people who just wanted to try it, because he sort of gave you the space. A lot of . . . I can name some totally straight poets who went to bed with Frank just once because that seemed their one chance, because he was that kind of person. So he just took it in his stride; that was just where it was. He said, Okay, I’ll go through with it. I’m sure he enjoyed it sometimes.

  TD: Where did you meet Anne Waldman?

  JB: I really don’t remember.

  TD: Where did you meet Kenward Elmslie?

  JB: Oh, I remember meeting him. Joe LeSueur took me to a birthday party of Kenward’s, and Joe was invited, and Joe took me. I thought he was terrific. I thought he was very handsome, and rich, and I was really impressed by that. And I loved his poetry, which I’m not sure I even understood at that point. But I knew that Ted and Ron did. So I knew he was good. Then we started doing some cartoons together for C Comics. But there’s something in between . . . yeah, I was staying with Jimmy Schuyler at Southampton and Kenward came out—he had a house in Westhampton—and he asked me if I played tennis. I said Sure; I didn’t play tennis, but I wanted to get to know him better. So I went out and played tennis with him. It was disastrous. Then we started collaborating on cartoons, after that. And then we got together.

  TD: It takes you a long time. (both laugh)

  JB: I’m better now than I used to be. (both laugh) I always find it hard to believe—this is going to sound ridiculous—I always find it hard to believe anyone . . . I mean I didn’t know I had any charm at all.

  TD: Do you now?

  JB: I know I have some. I don’t think I have a lot. My confidence wavers quite a bit; I can go higher than I should, and I can really sink. I’ve learned it’s a lot of faking, anyway. You can sort of fake yourself into looking good, and I’ve learned to do that sometimes. I can’t always do it, though. If the situation’s right, I can do it.

  TD: When did you have your first gallery show, and how did you get it?

  JB: I got it through John Gruen, actually. As soon as I got some work together, and—not that I wanted to have a show or anything immediately—I started going around to galleries. I did the thing where I’d walk around to galleries and just walk in and say “Would you like to see my work?” Some of the galleries were actually nice, and there were a couple that were sort of half-interested. Then there was a show at Finch College called “Artists Collect,” and people picked the work of a younger artist. Larry Rivers picked me—I think it was through Frank’s influence, because I don’t think he really knew my work—or Joe’s, or somebody’s—anyway, I got in that show. And John Gruen saw it and liked it a lot, so he sold Charles Alan of the Alan Gallery on the idea of seeing my work. He saw it and he liked it, and gave me a show, around 1964, I think.

  TD: You were still mighty young.

  JB: Yeah, I was, to have a show of my own.

  TD: Were you an instant success?

  JB: No. I just sold a few things in the first show. I never had a big success . . . except maybe last year or maybe that collage show a couple of years ago . . . and in Paris last year I had a big success. But it’s been very even, sort of gradual. It’s a hard thing to measure, anyway.

  TD: Your first show was sort of toward the tail end of the Pop Art phenomenon, right?

  JB: No, it was toward the beginning. There was a big Sidney Janis show, which was the first big Pop Art show in New York. It happened in ’63. So I knew Andy already.

  TD: What was that like?

  JB: He was the same as he is now. I think he was probably a little easier . . . he’s always been very nice. Completely weird, but . . . but he’s always been nice to me. I think a lot depends on whether or not you know him. He’s always one (indistinguishable) around me. It’s always the same. There are always a lot of people around, and he doesn’t have as much time . . . It’s just his presence, that’s all.

  TD: Do you like his work?

  JB: Yeah, I love his work. Don’t you?

  TD: Yeah, I do. Did you feel part of Pop Art?

  JB: I felt it a little bit, although in retrospect, it was totally different. ’Cause before I was doing the altars I was doing a series of paintings of 7-Up bottle labels, just the labels, with the big 7 and the little bubbles. I’d never really seen any Pop Art, then I looked in Time magazine and there was an Oldenburg 7-Up—sort of drippy and wet, you know—and a Warhol soup can, and I was kind of shocked. (Both laugh.) But that was just a phase; I’ve never really been a Pop Artist; I was in Pop Art shows.

  TD: Who are your big influences? Was it people around that time, or . . . do you have big influences?

  JB: In the last ten years I can think of lots, but before that I was sort of oblivious to influence. I got turned on by things, and they’d stimulate me, but not directly—just the energy. On the other hand, I think I’ve been influenced by everybody. I sort of imitate in a way, but I don’t do it directly.

  TD: Like who?

  JB: I think just about everybody I like. If I had all my works here I could show you drawings or paintings that remind me a little of Bonnard or de Kooning or just about everybody. I like style, I guess.

  TD: How involved were you in the “counter-culture” thing in the Sixties? I know you were a signer of the Timothy Leary Manifesto, or something . . .

  JB: I was? I did cartoons for the East Village Other, but I was never . . . I mean I’m not anti-anything, really. If I don’t like something I just tend to ignore it. I don’t claim at all that that’s good . . . but I’ve never really felt strongly about a cause. It’s always been different than reality for me, I think. I can get much more . . . you know . . . over a person, an individual. That’s real. I’ve given paintings and things . . . but that was generally because I was asked, and I thought it would be a nice thing to do, rather than the fact that it would help a cause. I wasn’t very political.


  TD: Did you know Leary?

  JB: Mm-mm, never met him.

  TD: When did you become a national figure?

  JB: You’ve got to be kidding.

  TD: You’ve been in People magazine! (Both laugh.) Listen, you’ve done the Christmas book for the Museum of Modern Art, you’re probably the most successful young artist in the country . . .

  JB: Oh no, not at all.

  TD: Who else is?

  JB: Oh there are a lot of painters who . . . I don’t have a definite commodity, and that’s the only way to make money. I change every year, and it’s very slow. A lot of people would know who I am, but they wouldn’t really know what I did. I mean, they’d have some fuzzy idea, because I’ve been so spaced out all the time. I’ve had oil-painting shows that were very realistic, then I’ve done jack-off collages, cut-outs one year and drawings . . . it’s all been very different. And the writing too confuses people. So I’m really not that . . . I mean, I make a decent living, which I think is amazing.

  TD: Well, you’re certainly one of the best-known young American artists.

  JB: It might be true in New York, but I’ve never had much luck outside . . . I’ve given shows around the country and I’ve never had that much luck. People want to buy a Warhol or a person instead of a work. My work’s never become “a Brainard.” People outside of New York don’t really understand that, I think. All the shows I’ve had have been flops, except in Paris and New York.

  TD: When did you start writing?

  JB: I started writing around the time of C magazine, but I didn’t write very much. I had no intentions of being a writer; everything was against me. I had no vocabulary, I can’t spell, I’m inarticulate. I have sort of learned to use that. But this happened because all my best friends were writers. I wrote a short story, the first thing I remember writing, and I showed it to Ted and he said, “It’s very good.” So I kept at it.

  TD: How did you decide to do I Remember? You’re remembered for I Remember . . . (Both laugh.)

  JB: My only major work. How did I do it?

  TD: Yeah, how did you decide to . . . is that a dumb question?

  JB: No, I mean . . . it’s very appropriate to how I decided to do it. A lot of times when I’m not painting—or even when I’m painting—I set up something for me to do. Like I’ll say, “I’m going to paint a peach” or “I’m going to paint a pear,” or if I’m writing I’ll say “I’m going to sit outside and describe what’s around me,” or “I’ll try to write very short stories,” or some kind of project. And that was a project. I decided one day that I would lay out in the sun and close my eyes and try to remember and just write down whatever I remembered, free-floating. So I did that one day and I loved it, but I still thought it would be one piece, one big piece. Then I showed it to Jimmy Schuyler who was staying up there . . .

  TD: Where was this, Vermont?

  JB: Vermont, yeah. And he flipped over it and said I’d better keep going. So I kept going. He was an instant audience; I would do it all day and show it to him, and he would tell me how terrific it was, which was all I needed for the next day. After a few days I was stuck; then I realized it was something I wanted to carry through. I started finding out all kinds of different things about one’s head.

  TD: How so?

  JB: Well, I have a terrible memory, for one thing. I can’t remember anything. But then I began to realize that beyond that point there is another level of knowledge that could be triggered off. It wasn’t really useful knowledge unless it was triggered off; then I sort of used up that and there kept being more and different layers of things that were hidden. It isn’t really there spontaneously. So I got into that. I was unaware of it, for one thing, that all that was retained.

  TD: So you weren’t haunted by your past?

  JB: Oh no, I totally erased my past; I’m very cold-blooded. But it was amazing to me that it was still there. It isn’t nostalgic at all, because I’m not nostalgic. It’s just really about the memory more than anything else, because that’s what I relied on. (Pause.) It’s really fascinating how things trigger something else off. And it’s fascinating how much gets twisted, too. There’s an awful lot of stuff in there that’s wrong, in retrospect. People said, “That didn’t happen that way at all.” I mean, I’m assuming they’re right and I’m wrong. That was one of the hard things about the final version, whether to stick to what was true, or stick to my memory.

  TD: What did you do?

  JB: I pretty much stuck to my memory.

  TD: What other writing projects do you either have in mind to do or do you want to do?

  JB: To write a novel, for sure, because I’m a novel freak. And also I’m just at the point now where I sort of feel like I have enough patience, and that I could—though I’m probably going to focus more on the painting—that I could throw everything into one big time period and really focus it. I think it will be a painting. But I still want to write a novel very much. A love story, about guys. It’s already an old-fashioned idea, but I still want to write a gay novel that doesn’t apologize at all—I mean, that could be read by straights just as well, and it wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever. I just think that would be terrific.

  TD: Is there anything like that that you’ve read?

  JB: Well, Mary Renault, but that’s a whole other area, to write like that. But I think she—I mean, it just pops up, with no big to-do. It’s a big to-do, but it’s not a big to-do because it’s two guys instead of a guy and a girl.

  TD: Your latest book of erotic drawings is Gay B Cs, drawings to a poem by Jonathan Williams. You don’t use models?

  JB: Oh, I do, but not enough.

  TD: You do? I didn’t know that.

  JB: It’s sort of what my next show is going to be, big oil paintings of nudes . . .

  TD: Anyone I know?

  JB: I haven’t started yet. (Both laugh.) That’s my plan. And portraits, too.

  (BREAK TO TURN OVER CASSETTE)

  TD: Are you having fun?

  JB: Yeah, I like to talk.

  TD: Do you consider yourself a “gay artist”? Is there such a thing as “gay art” outside of subject matter? Is there a “gay sensibility” that infuses your work or infuses the work of poets you know?

  JB: Does a gay sensibility exist?

  TD: Does it exist in your work, and does it exist at all?

  JB: I think it does in mine, but I think it’s sort of closing out. I think that kids are coming up now . . . I don’t think it’s that important to most kids now. I mean it’s not that much of an issue, while at one point, in my life, it was an issue.

  TD: You mean personal?

  JB: Yeah. Isn’t that what you mean?

  TD: Well, is it a matter of subject, or what’s it a matter of?

  JB: It’s a matter of being aware of it, I think, but that doesn’t answer your question. Sometimes it’s a subject matter, obviously; with a drawing of two guys fucking it’s obviously subject matter. But I think it’s more than that. Most artists are very straight, I mean straight in their seriousness and in what they’re trying to do. I think I’m a lot more sensual, I mean I’m a lot more ga-ga than that—but on purpose. No, not on purpose.

  TD: Sort of a ludic quality, playful?

  JB: Yes. (Pause.) I’m not really sure that has anything to do with being gay, though, ’cause I think my work is very sensual, very lush and all that, but I’m not sure that has to do with being gay. If I was straight it might be that way too. I don’t know.

  TD: Who are the great artists of your time? I don’t mean Picasso; I mean people who are alive and, say, within thirty years of you . . .

  JB: Well, that’s sort of an assumption that I find hard to swallow, anyway. To me, an awful lot of it is just taste. But I can tell you who my favorite painters are. De Kooning is my all-time favorite . . .

  TD: Do you know him?

  JB: I’ve met him twice. I think Andy’s terrific, and Jane Freilicher, and Fairfield Porter, and Elizabeth Murray.
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br />   TD: I don’t know her work at all.

  JB: She shows at Paula Cooper Gallery. It’s hard to describe—it’s like a tough abstract, sort of worked over, like you started out with an incredible mess and tried to make some serene sense out of it. It gets very heavy, but it’s very nice. And Joan Mitchell . . . I can go on and on, but beyond that it’s an enormous list.

  TD: A couple of those are people who are well known as Abstract Expressionist painters. How does that connect with your work?

  JB: I think I’m sort of the reverse of that. I think of Abstract Expressionist painting as high seriousness. It’s spilling out your guts all over. You think, and you work from an area that has no boundaries, so it’s very tough and you’ve got to be very serious about it, and dedicated to an ideal. I like to start with nothing and just surprise myself. But it’s not—it doesn’t come out of gut emotions or a high sense of color or something as a source. I may use it, but it’s not the source.

  TD: I want to pretend that I’m the interviewer for 16 Magazine and ask you all the questions that 16 Magazine asks its superstars.

  JB: Do you know them?

  TD: Yeah. (Both laugh.) What’s your favorite color?

  JB: I don’t think I have any, but I know what I’d say. I’d say red. But I think it’s an intellectual choice. Color’s my one really strong point. No color exists except in the particular way it exists. But I like the idea of red.

  TD: Doesn’t sound like a Troy Donahue answer. (Both laugh.)

  JB: I didn’t know I had to sound like that. Otherwise I’d have just said red.

  TD: What’s your favorite food?

  JB: Well, I have a favorite dish. It’s a baked potato with sour cream and black caviar which I really love.

  TD: What’s your favorite book?

  JB: Anna Karenina. I’d really like to say a book of poems, but that would be stretching the point. I really love Anna Karenina.

  TD: What’s your favorite TV show? You don’t have a TV, so this will be really interesting . . .

  JB: I love Carol Burnett. I think she’s really terrific. I like Mary Tyler Moore, too. I can’t imagine why I like her so much. I didn’t at first. There’s certain awful things about the show, but somehow I think it has incredible backbone that’s very hidden. And also I liked Gracie, Allen and Gracie . . .