Arts Bombast: Joe Brainard
I have Brainard on the brain. Yesterday would have been Joe Brainard’s 71st birthday. For me, the New York poet and visual artist embodies everything good about pop art, queer art, and modernism. His depiction of beauty is dramatic on the first look, and silly on all subsequent.
His memoir, I Remember, has been on my list FOREVER, but I always end up forgetting that I want to read it. (Damn you, IRONY.) I have a friend who I’ve been meaning to start a two-man book club with, so I think I’ll ask her if she’s interested in reading it too.
Brainard died of AIDS in 1994. Anyway, Happy would-be Birthday. If I was in New York, I would totally partake in this new Jim Jarmusch-narrated East Village Poetry Walk, which features the work of Brainard. Also, one of his paintings is included on the back cover of this amazing album.
