Joe Brainard: 10 Collages

The Drawing Room and Eric Brown Art Group are pleased to present an exhibition of ten rarely seen works on paper by Joe Brainard (1942– 1994). The show of collages dating from 1968 to 1981 features many of the artist’s best-known motifs: pansies, grasses, windows with crescent moons, hearts and playing cards.

Joe Brainard is celebrated for his small-scale collages and works on paper. Although most closely identified with the New York School of painters and poets, he also knew Andy Warhol well and considered him – along with Willem de Kooning – among his favorite artists. Brainard’s works are often witty, and in contrast to the cool detachment of much of the Pop art of the period, many of his collages convey an endearing tenderness. His work combines technical mastery and a natural gift for composition with endless invention and imagination.

Brainard grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and moved to New York in 1960. He gained early recognition with his first solo exhibition in 1965. Over the following decade he showed regularly in galleries and his work was presented in numerous museum exhibitions. In 2001 Brainard’s work was the subject of a traveling retrospective co-organized by MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City and the Berkeley Art Museum. His drawings, collages, assemblages and paintings are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum among many other public collections.

See below for full press release and catalog.