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Joe Brainard’s work featured in exhibition
Poetry reading, lecture to be held in conjunction with gallery exhibition
By ANNE REED
Reporter Contributor
"Joe Brainard, People of the World: Relax!!," an exhibition highlighting original drawings from Brainard's self-published journal C Comics 2, as well as assemblages, collages and paper cutouts, will open in the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts, North Campus, with a public reception at 5 p.m. Jan. 25.
The exhibition, which will be on view through March 3, also will feature numerous publications to which Brainard contributed writings and drawings, such as The White Dove Review, C Journal and Big Sky.
Brainard (1942-1994) grew up in Tulsa, Okla., where he first began designing signs and posters for school clubs. In high school, Brainard acted as the art director for the White Dove Review, a magazine of contemporary art and writing founded by Ron Padgett and Dick Gallup. In late 1960, he moved to New York City, where he continued his early collaborations with poets and writers, and developed an engaging visual-art practice. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Brainard was part of a burgeoning literary and artistic circle that included Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, Larry Rivers, Jane Freilicher, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, to name a few.
The influences of Johns, Warhol and Joseph Cornell can be seen in Brainard's early paintings and assemblages but, as Padgett writes on the artist's Web site, "Joe's work soon distinguished itself by its lyricism, wit, warmth and generosity, combined with his penchant for making art that was unabashedly beautiful."
His collages and intricately detailed flower-and-grass paper cutouts pressed between layers of Plexiglas are like visual poems, while his bejeweled assemblages made of dime-store materials and urban detritus are suggestive of religious reliquaries.
Brainard's writings fall into several categories: memoir, diaries, Pop Art, short essays and verbal-visual collaborations. Drawing from the UB Poetry and Rare Books collections' vast assortment of journals, magazines, broadsides and first-edition books, "Joe Brainard, People of the World: Relax!! captures the freewheeling and generative excitement of New York City in the 1960s and '70s.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the UB Art Galleries and the Poetry and Rare Books collections will present two special events. Ron Padgett, Brainard's childhood friend, and Kenward Elmslie will give a poetry reading, entitled "Mixed Media," at 8 p.m. Jan. 26 in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The event, part of the Gusto at the Gallery series, also will feature the David Kane Quartet and a site-specific performance by Nimbus Dance.
Padgett, who met Brainard in Tulsa at the age of six, has published numerous books, including a memoir, "Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers"; a collection of poems, "You Never Know"; and "Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard."
As a member of the first-generation New York School of Poets, Elmslie introduced contemporary poetry to Broadway in the form of musicals. In addition to many books of poetry, he has created work for the musical stage, including "Postcards on Parade," "City Junket" and an adaptation of Truman Capote's "The Grass Harp."
On Feb. 1 at 1 p.m., a Brown Bag Lunch Lecture by Steven Clay, publisher of Granary Books, will take place in the First Floor Gallery of the UB Art Gallery. Clay is an editor, curator and archivist specializing in American art and literature of the 1960s, '70s and '80s. He is the author, with Rodney Phillips, of "A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing 1960-1980."
Both events will be free and open to the public.
The UB Art Gallery is funded by the College of Arts Sciences, the Visual Arts Building Fund, the Seymour H. Knox Foundation Fine Arts Fund and the Fine Arts Center Endowment. Additional funding for this exhibition was provided by Just Buffalo Literary Center, the Poetry and Rare Books collections and the Department of Visual Studies. The Steven Clay lecture is sponsored by the Mildred Lockwood Lacey Fund for Poetry.