Joe Brainard

In the mid-1960s, legendary artist and writer Joe Brainard (I Remember) teamed with poets such as John Ashbery, Frank O?Hara, Barbara Guest, Ron Padgett, Kenneth Koch, Ted Berrigan, and many more for these pioneering collaborative comic strips?unavailable for decades and collected here for the first time.?PEOPLE OF THE WORLD… RELAX!?In the creative hotbed of 1960s New York, Joe Brainard was a whirlwind. He was a maker of paintings, assemblages, collages, book covers, poetry reading fliers, and more. But some of his most exciting work was done with his friends. In 1964, the twenty-two year old Brainard turned his talents to rewiring the lowly comic book form into something new and surprising. He invited his friends Frank O''Hara, Ted Berrigan, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Peter Schjeldahl, Anne Waldman, Ron Padgett, and others?all of them New York School poets?to collaborate with him on comics that they would write and he would draw.The results were unlike any comics seen before. Previously available only on the rare-book market (at very high prices) but available here under one cover for the first time, the two issues of C Comics still feel as fresh as when the first page rolled off the mimeograph machine over sixty years ago. Brainard?s energetic line and joyful humor charge across every page, illustrating Frank O?Hara''s recasting of a cowboy as a mash note?writing lover, Ron Padgett?s experiments with traditional cartoon sound effects (ROAR! GRRR! SKREE!), surprising cameos by Ernie Bushmiller?s Nancy, and heaps of Dadaesque delights.This edition includes a foreword from Padgett and an essay by comics historian Bill Kartalopolous, who details the creation (and creators) of C Comics. A masterpiece of collaboration and spontaneity, C Comics is a testament to the vastness of Brainard?s creativity and his ability to push any artistic form in a new and powerful direction.

An enduring gem, Joe Brainard’s I Remember is a literary and artistic cult classic. Brainard’s method was brilliantly simple: to set down specific memories as they rose to the surface of his consciousness, each beginning with the refrain ‘I remember’: ‘I remember that little jerk you give just before you fall asleep. Like falling.’ Recollections – jokes, confessions, daydreams and memories – were carefully, lovingly woven together. They were of family and friends; of movie stars; of early heterosexual fumblings and later gay life. Brainard's pared-back prose dodged both self-pity and judgement of others, and was written with an ear for musical cadence and an extraordinary painter’s eye. The result is witty, incantatory, profound and wholly captivating.