Artforum Critics Pick by Nicholas Chittenden Morgan Those needing a dose of gaiety—both the festive and the faggy kinds—should make their way to “100 Works,” a survey of paintings, drawings, and collages by the late Joe Brainard(1942–1994). Most are no bigger than a notebook page, and the dense hang is perfectly in keeping with the artist’s aesthetic of accumulation. He was, after all, the author of I Remember (1975), an expansive inventory of memories ranging from sad to sexy, beautiful to banal.
Joe Brainard in Hyperallergic by John Yau - May 2019 Minor Master or Master of the Minor?One reason Joe Brainard made so many small works was to convey that modesty and ambition were not mutually exclusive.
Joe Brainard’s last New York show in his lifetime was legendary because of the sheer number of works it included. It was in 1975 at the Fishbach Gallery and Brainard was in his early 30s. Rather than making large works, as did many of his contemporaries, he cheerfully did the opposite: within a period of a few years, Brainard made more than 3,000 tiny collages. The gallery managed to exhibit 1,500 of them, which was quite a logistical feat.
Brainard’s reason for making small, affordable works is revealing. Talking to Lee Wohlfert about his students at the School of Visual Arts and about his motivations for working small, Brainard stated:
Most of the students agree that the art scene has gotten too big, too serious, too sacred, too self-important and too expensive.Already a bad situation in Brainard’s lifetime, the art world’s self-importance has become appalling since his death in 1994. The triumph of obscene wealth, bulbous frivolity, and swell-headed immodesty is not something the art world should be proud of, yet it is. (Maybe it is time that critics start calling out curators who seem to chase and champion only financially successful artists who make large works.)
Beyond the fact that Brainard reveled in making art, I think one reason he made so many small works was to convey that modesty and ambition were not mutually exclusive. To this combination he added a large dose of relentlessness, heightened by his inclination to be thorough. He once wrote me that he was going to read all of Charles Dickens’s novels again.
