Love, Joe

The Selected Letters of Joe Brainard

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Pub Date 26 Nov 2024 | Archive Date 5 Mar 2025

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Description

An artist and writer whose charming and inventive works are at once modest and ambitious, Joe Brainard was one of the most distinctive figures on New York City’s vibrant cultural scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Widely known for his influential experimental memoir, I Remember, Brainard worked in a variety of forms, from New York School–aligned poetry to Pop Art–adjacent artworks, including wild riffs on the comic strip character Nancy. His art drew on the everyday and popular culture, exuding a sense of amiability, wit, and generosity.

Love, Joe presents a selection of Brainard’s letters stretching from 1959 to 1993, offering an intimate view of his personal and artistic life. They allow readers to witness an extraordinarily fertile moment in New York’s history, when literary and visual arts intersected with happenings, proto-punk and psychedelic rock concerts, and experimental music and dance performances. Brainard’s letters to his partner, Kenward Elmslie, and others also open a window onto the transformations of queer life during this period. His correspondents include poet and artist friends such as John Ashbery, Anne Waldman, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Fairfield Porter, Ron Padgett, Bernadette Mayer, James Schuyler, Alex Katz, and Andy Warhol, as well as lovers, patrons, high school friends, and fans. At once an insider’s view of the art and literary worlds and a revelation of Brainard’s creative process, these letters invite readers to share in his radical but gentle candor, his open-mindedness, and a sophisticated naiveté that helped him erase the conventional barriers between art and life.

An artist and writer whose charming and inventive works are at once modest and ambitious, Joe Brainard was one of the most distinctive figures on New York City’s vibrant cultural scene in the 1960s...


Advance Praise

"Joe Brainard was the sweetest person I've ever known, and that sweetness radiates from these letters, which are also an essential record of New York's painters and poets from the 1960s to the 1990s. Famous for his writing in I Remember and for his thousands of beautiful collages, Joe was a passionate, original spirit, gifted with a serious naiveté."

--Edmund White, author of The Humble Lover

"Joe Brainard was the sweetest person I've ever known, and that sweetness radiates from these letters, which are also an essential record of New York's painters and poets from the 1960s to the 1990s...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780231203425
PRICE US$35.00 (USD)
PAGES 296

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Featured Reviews

Love, Joe is a selection of artist Joe Brainard’s letters and the book was edited by Prof Daniel Kane, an expert in literature.
I was only remotely familiar with Brainard prior to picking up this book - his memoir, I Remember, and his cultural influence in the 60s.
To be more precise, I had forgotten about what he went through in his final years, and with this collection of interestingly formatted letters by Brainard (they are creative, cute, intimate, sincere, funny, touching), sometimes questionnaire answers, sometimes drawings, I got to explore the mind of an influential artist, who struggled with his queerness and devoted his final years to living life and loving his loved ones.

A great book for memoir readers, Brainard enthusiasts, those interested in the past and cultural circles, and simply, human condition.

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