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

by Ron Padgett

  AW: What have been successful collaborations?

  JB: I think almost all of them have been successful one way or another. They’re always different. Living with Chris I like a lot. Even though that wasn’t exactly a collaboration. I mean the poem was already written. But I illustrated it the way I was saying about relating in the same vein but not illustrating. Same with Vermont Notebook. I divided it up by pages and I started in the middle and just tried to add to the poem but not to illustrate it. I tried to relate at certain points but in factual ways not in emotional ways.

  AW: What paintings do you look at?

  JB: I like de Kooning and I like Alex Katz—I mean I don’t always like Alex Katz but I find him interesting—and I’m partial to painterly paintings: Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter, Manet, and Goya.

  AW: Why is that?

  JB: ’Cause I like paint and also it’s similar to my attitude where what comes out has a lot to do with your involvement in the process of painting as opposed to the execution of something in a mechanical way or in a definite style.

  AW: But Alex Katz doesn’t come under this category.

  JB: No he doesn’t but I still like him.

  AW: He has a real method.

  JB: Yes he does have method but he has the upper hand somehow.

  AW: What amuses you the most?

  JB: Being stoned and the Marx Brothers.

  AW: Would you say something philosophical here?

  JB: Well these are weird times, that’s for sure. There’s just too much information. There are just too many possibilities.

  AW: That hasn’t been true in the past?

  JB: No, I really don’t think so. I think in the past, generally speaking, there have been limitations on one’s life. Like people got married more. That was it, that was their life, and there wasn’t all this possibility—great pornography around everywhere—and you couldn’t go to Europe in five minutes. But you can do anything now. But it’s hard on us, all these choices. Emotionally hard too. There are so many decisions to always be making. But I’m speaking from my own standpoint, which is being free and in New York. And I don’t have a 9–5 job so I can make decisions every minute. Whether to go outside or go to a movie or go to Europe, whether to paint or cruise or write. Whether to eat Indian food or Italian food or American food. It’s nice to be in the country—in Vermont. There are fewer possibilities.

  AW: What about sexuality?

  JB: Well role-playing is dubious right now so that puts fewer pressures on people to live up to a certain standard and because there really is no standard and you take away the imposed standard one flounders a bit.

  AW: And what about your prediction that men will be wearing skirts in two years?

  JB: That’s just style. It’ll happen gradually. First like an Indian skirt that’s pulled up still with legs. Clothes are just getting looser and the idea of suits at this point is so absurd. Just think abstractly: a suit as uniform doesn’t make sense anymore ’cause it doesn’t have the counterbalance of a woman wearing a dress. A suit was originally a complement to what a woman would wear but that’s all broken down now.

  AW: Do you feel close to Joseph Cornell’s work?

  JB: It’s funny, a lot of people think I must. I like him, but his things are not painterly. Even my collages are painterly. He also has a set set of symbols to tell stories with. I have symbols too, but they aren’t a set set. They come with the materials.

  AW: And where do your materials come from?

  JB: From everywhere. The street, the dimestore, in the mail . . . I’m still tempted to collect them, but I resist.

  AW: What’s the longest work stretch you’ve ever done?

  JB: I went for three days once, with the help of a little speed, of course, but I got crazy. I was seeing little people. On the third day I went out to get some glue and I had already started seeing little people in the apartment in odd places and then I saw two people down on the corner doing things, fucking. Two little people fucking. And I sensed people behind me doing things. I was just over-extended, but I’m sure it’s awfully close to going bonkers. I could have believed in what I saw instead of not knowing what it was, and I suppose if you go to that point it makes you incompatible with society. If you didn’t feel like coping with life, you could give in to this kind of thing.

  AW: Did you ever become so absorbed by the collages that they became more real than your “everyday” life?

  JB: It only happened once. When you’re involved in work, that’s all there is—by choice, I mean. But one time—which I still don’t understand—I spent a whole night working and doing these works and I know I was awake and doing them, but the works don’t exist. I don’t understand it to this day and I swear to god that I did them.

  AW: Do you remember the works?

  JB: The whole thing is very fuzzy now. It was a lot realer than usual. I know I was awake. I wasn’t here, but I know I was awake and working. This was very different from dreaming that I’d done works. This would be the time when I’d say doing collages “took over.”

  AW: It seems like the details, the various images could take over. That you might fall into the reality of the images, so to speak. That it’s incredibly obsessive mentally. Painting seems a more physical activity.

  JB: I’m not sure if that’s true. When I was at my pitch I’d be all over the floor. I’d be orchestrating all over the place. At a certain point there were so few confinements it was really mindblowing. After a while I had trouble with my eyes.

  AW: Would you go back?

  JB: Never again. I could never get into it that deeply again. I wouldn’t want to if I couldn’t go whole hog. There are thousands of collages that are not quite finished. I would carry them so far and I would see them completed in my head and then I would lose interest and start something else. I’d have so much material going with the ideas that the beginning came much faster than I could keep up with.

  AW: Do you feel an affinity to any particular time in the past?

  JB: Romantically I’m attached to the Greeks.

  AW: What advice would you give a younger artist or poet?

  JB: The main thing is, and what I keep telling my students, is to approach painting as an activity and to be open to things that happen and not decide to do a painting but decide to experience something and leave something open. Then painting is very pertinent to your life. A lot of kids are very confused about why they should bother, and in the way painting is such a process there really is no reason except to make more paintings, which the world certainly doesn’t need. But it could be a way of learning something and being involved and a way of discovery and as a way to keep you from going bonkers.

  AW: Have you ever violently destroyed something you’ve made?

  JB: I’ve destroyed a lot of things but not out of violence. I’ve always done it in a positive sense. I’ve destroyed things because I didn’t think they were good enough and just because I’ve wanted to erase my past and not be burdened by them. To me, one should throw away and tear up a lot, that’s always been a positive thing for me.

  AW: What’s coming up for you?

  JB: People, on a grander scale. And a few paintings I’m really proud of. I’ve done an awful lot of works that rely on raw energy. I’d like to do a masterpiece or two before it’s too late.

  AW: What’s your favorite color?

  JB: Red.

  AW: Why?

  JB: I wouldn’t miss the chance to say “red” for one thing. I’d say “red” even if it weren’t my favorite color.

  AW: What if everyone said “red”?

  JB: I think everyone should say “red.”

  Chronology

  1942 Joe Howard Brainard born March 11 in Salem, Arkansas. Shortly thereafter, family moves to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  1947–1960 Attends public schools. Wins numerous art awards.

  1959–60 With schoolmates Ron Padgett and Dick Gallup, edits independent little magazine, The White Dove Review. Meets poet
Ted Berrigan and Patricia Mitchell.

  1960 Visits New York City in September with Padgett, before beginning study at Dayton (Ohio) Art Institute. In December, drops out and moves to New York, renting a storefront apartment at 210 East 6th Street. Shortly thereafter, Berrigan joins him. Paints, works part-time in Lower East Side junk/antique store, sells his blood.

  1961 Returns to Tulsa in April, then spends two months in Guanajuato, Mexico, with artist Nylajo Harvey and her husband Bob. Solo exhibition opens in Tulsa in late May. Returns to New York very early June. Summer, moves to $23 per month cold-water apartment at 93 First Avenue (top floor), with no gas or electricity.

  1962 Begins writing, encouraged by Berrigan and Padgett. In summer, visits Tulsa with Padgett and Mitchell.

  1963–1992 Designs covers and does illustrations for many literary magazines and books by poet friends.

  1963 Moves to Boston in January. Rents a room in a shabby rooming house at 231 West Newton. Completes “breakthrough” collages and begins making small assemblages. Intermittent jobs in layout and graphic design. Periods of intense poverty and loneliness. Fall, returns to New York, staying for a few months with Ron and Pat (Mitchell) Padgett. Eventually meets writers (Joe LeSueur, Frank O’Hara, Kenward Elmslie, Edwin Denby, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler), artists (Alex Katz, Andy Warhol, Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter, Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns), and composers (Virgil Thomson and Ned Rorem). Late in the year, moves into poet Tony Towle’s apartment at 441 East 9th Street, sharing it with him. Makes collages and assemblages, continues writing.

  1964 Designs décor for LeRoi Jones’s play Dutchman and Frank O’Hara’s The General Returns from One Place to Another. Late in year, begins sharing loft with sculptor Michael Steiner at 21 Bleecker Street, creating larger assemblages. Begins relationship with poet Kenward Elmslie.

  1964–65 Produces C Comics 1 and C Comics 2, collections of his comic strip collaborations with poets (O’Hara, Berrigan, Elmslie, Koch, Padgett, Bill Berkson, et al.).

  1965 Moves to apartment at 240 East 2nd Street. Inspired by the color scheme of Jacques Demy’s film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, paints the walls in various pastel shades, but when result disappoints him, moves to apartment at 40 Avenue B. First New York solo exhibition (assemblages), at Alan Gallery. First group exhibition, at Finch College Museum, selected by Larry Rivers. Summer, goes by car to Tulsa with the Padgetts. Returns to New York by plane, his first time in one. Tours Italy, Spain, and France with Elmslie.

  1965–1979 Participates in forty-five group shows.

  1965–1992 Produces fifteen collaborative books with poets (Elmslie, Anne Waldman, Berrigan, Padgett, Robert Creeley, et al.). 1965–1993 Spends almost every summer with Elmslie in rural Vermont.

  1967 Solo exhibition at Landau-Alan Gallery, New York, of paintings and assemblages of flowers, dolls, and shrines. Designs cover for ARTnews. Receives grant from the Copley Foundation. Spends summer at Fairfield and Anne Porter’s house in Southampton, New York, with Elmslie; fall in Vermont. Moves to 74 Jane Street. Teaches at Cooper Union.

  1968 Ten-day vacation in Jamaica with Elmslie, Jane Freilicher, and Joe Hazan. Solo exhibitions at Gotham Bookmart, New York, of drawings, and Jerrold Morris Gallery, Toronto. Designs cover of ARTnews Annual XXXIV: The Avant-Garde. Spends summer in Southampton with Elmslie at Porter house.

  1969 Solo exhibition at Landau-Alan Gallery of flower garden paintings and collages. In November moves to loft at 664 Sixth Avenue.

  1970 Solo exhibitions at Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York, of flowers, and Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago. Publishes first of I Remember series of books.

  1971 Spends two months in Bolinas, California. First solo exhibition at Fischbach Gallery, of cutouts of weeds and flowers. Publishes Bolinas Journal, Selected Writings, 1962–1971, and Some Drawings of Some Notes to Myself.

  1972 “102 Works on Paper (1966–1972),” solo exhibition at Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City. Publishes The Cigarette Book, The Friendly Way, The Banana Book, and I Remember More. Designs cover for ARTnews. Solo exhibitions at Fischbach (drawings and collages of friends, Nancy, tattooed torsos, grids), New York Cultural Center (paintings and grass cutouts), and School of Visual Arts (drawings). Begins teaching at School of Visual Arts.

  1973 Tours France and Italy with Elmslie, Maxine Groffsky, and Harry Mathews. Publishes New Work and More I Remember More. Museum of Modern Art publishes his I Remember Christmas.

  ca. 1973–74 Costume and set designs for Louis Falco Dance Troupe.

  1974 Fischbach solo exhibition of landscapes, still lifes, and paintings of Whippoorwill, Elmslie’s whippet. First show entirely of oil paintings.

  1974 Moves to loft at 8 Greene Street.

  1975 Last Fischbach exhibition, of around 1500 small paintings and collages. Publishes Twelve Postcards and the collected I Remember.

  1976 Solo exhibitions in Philadelphia; Kansas City, Kansas; Newport, Rhode Island; Paddington, Australia; and Paris.

  1978 Solo exhibitions in Bridgehampton and Hamilton, New York. Publishes 29 Mini-Essays.

  1979 Begins relationship with actor Keith McDermott.

  1980 Decides to stop exhibiting new work, but allows solo exhibition at Long Beach Museum of Art. Publishes 24 Pictures and Some Words. Designs costumes and décor for Joffrey Ballet Co.

  1981 Nothing to Write Home About published.

  1981–1994 Despite opinion of others, remains dissatisfied with results of sporadic art production. Reads enormously. Coaxed by writer friends into doing a few cover designs and collaborations for books.

  1983 His comic strip collaborations appear in a German edition.

  1985 Does sixty drawings for Sung Sex (text by Elmslie), published in 1989.

  1987 Solo exhibition of selections from the Butts Collection (later renamed the Joe Brainard Collection), Mandeville Gallery, University of California, San Diego.

  1988 Spring, trip to Venice with Elmslie. Summer, extended trip to Hawaii with Elmslie. Remainder of summer in Vermont.

  1994 Dies of pneumonia, induced by AIDS. Ashes scattered in Calais, Vermont.

  Note on the Texts

  The text of I Remember in the present volume has been taken from the complete and corrected 2001 edition published in New York by Granary Books. The first edition of I Remember (New York: Angel Hair, 1970) proved immediately popular, and Brainard wrote several sequels: I Remember More (New York: Angel Hair, 1972), More I Remember More (New York: Angel Hair, 1973), and I Remember Christmas (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973). In 1975, Brainard gathered, rearranged, and added to these initial versions of his work in a new edition of I Remember, published in New York by Full Court Press. The 2001 Granary Books edition reprinted the text of the 1975 Full Court edition with minor corrections.

  The texts in the Self-Portrait section of this volume—a collection of Brainard’s other writings—have been taken from Brainard’s manuscripts and typescripts, his published books, a variety of little magazines, and in one instance a posthumous biography. They are presented in approximate chronological order of composition. Six of Brainard’s books—Some Drawings of Some Notes to Myself (New York: Siamese Banana, 1971), Bolinas Journal (Bolinas, CA: Big Sky Books, 1971), The Friendly Way (New York: Siamese Banana, 1972), The Cigarette Book (New York: Siamese Banana, 1972), and Nothing to Write Home About (Los Angeles: Little Caesar Press, 1981), hereafter abbreviated as NTWHA, have been included in their entirety, along with extensive selections from his Selected Writings, 1962–1971 (New York: Kulchur Foundation, 1971) (hereafter SW) and New Work (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1973) (NW). In cases where multiple versions of a given work exist, Brainard’s later versions have generally been preferred. The texts have been minimally regularized—punctuation associated with quotation marks and parentheses made consistent, titles rendered in italics, misspellings and minor grammatical or typographical errors corrected—but they are otherwise presented without change. Some items, marked with an asterisk (*) in
the list of sources that follows, are believed to be published here for the first time. The approximate date of composition of each item is listed in italics.

  *Self-Portrait on Christmas Night: typescript, Estate of Joe Brainard. December 1961

  Back in Tulsa Again: SW 14–19. May 1962

  *Saturday July 21st 1962: typescript, Estate. July 1962

  Diary Aug. 4th–15th: SW 12–13. August 1962

  The China Sea: typescript, Estate. 1962–63?

  *Picnic or Yonder Comes the Blue: typescript, Estate. 1962–63?

  *A True Story: typescript, Estate. April 1963?

  *I Like [“A happy glory to sky!”]: hand-corrected typescript, Estate (in a letter to Pat and Ron Padgett). Spring 1963?

  *I Like [“I Joe”]: typescript, Estate. Spring 1963?

  *The People: Ron Padgett papers (Uncat MSS 1194, Box 7), Beinecke Library, Yale University. Included in sections in two undated letters, the first to Pat and Ron Padgett, the second to Pat Padgett. July 1963?

  Andy Warhol: Andy Do It: SW 20–21. December 1963?

  The Man: Wagner Literary Magazine 4 (1963–64): 86–87. December 1963?

  Marge: SW 30–31. December 1963?

  Johnny: SW 23. December 1963?

  Nancy [“It was coffee time”]: SW 25–26. December 1963?

  Nancy [“Nancy was always handing me”]: SW 46–48. December 1963?

  May Dye: manuscript, Estate. January 1964

  Colgate Dental Cream: SW 27–28. 1964?

  Brunswick Stew: SW 29. 1964?

  Sick Art: SW 39. 1964?

  Sunday, July the 30th, 1964: Kulchur 5.18 (Summer 1965): 56–58. July 1964

  *Saturday, December the 11th, 1965: manuscript, Estate. December 1965

  Van Gogh: SW 73. 1965?