Untitled (Male Nude Under Sheets).

Graphite on paper.

24 x 18 in (60.9 x 45.7 cm).

Notes:

Joe Brainard was an American artist, poet, costumer, and theater set designer. Born in Salem, Arkansas, he was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Brainard became an integral member of the New York School, a loosely defined network of poets, artists, writers, musicians, and dancers active during the 1950s and 1960s.

Throughout his career, Brainard continually oscillated between different media —drawing, collage, cut-outs, assemblage, and found-object sculpture— resisting easy categorization of his artistic practice. Brainard foremost considered “himself a painter”. [1] Despite receiving little formal artistic training, he was an accomplished draughtsman which is particularly evident in his graphite portraits of his close friends and artistic collaborators.

Alongside his visual art, Brainard achieved lasting recognition as a writer and published numerous volumes of poetry and prose. Brainard is probably best-known as the author of I Remember (1975), an experimental memoir composed entirely of recollections prefaced by the refrain “I remember.”

Brainard died from AIDS-related pneumonia in New York City in 1994 at the age of fifty-two.

[1] Constance M. Lewallen, “Acts of Generosity,” Joe Brainard: A Retrospective (Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley; New York: Granary Books; San Diego: Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego, 2001), p. 30.

Nothing adverse to note.

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