Joe Brainard's Queer Seriousness, or, How to Make Fun out of the Avant-Garde

Butt, Gavin. 2006. Joe Brainard's Queer Seriousness, or, How to Make Fun out of the Avant-Garde. In: David Hopkins, ed. Neo-avant-garde (Avant Garde Critical Studies). Rodopi, pp. 277-297. ISBN 978-9042021259 [Book Section]

No full text available

Abstract or Description

This essay focuses upon the work of U.S. artist Joe Brainard and his association with the New York School of Poetry, most notably Frank O'Hara. The discussion of this work is undertaken in order to consider what might constitute a 'queerly serious' address to questions of meaning and value. The work of the New York School poets and of selected second generation New York artists has often been taken as falling short of an avowedly 'serious' model of poetic and artistic practice; one which is heavily identified with the values of conventional heterosexual masculinity. But rather than simply falling in line with such criticism – and dismissing such work as effete, if not homosexual – this essay asks how work such as Brainard's might make us rethink such a 'straight' judgemental attitude by presenting us with a decidedly queer approach to serious subject matter and earnest forms of expression. What might constitute a perverse valorisation of the deeply serious? And how might it be possible to make fun out of the serious business of avant-garde art production?

Item Type:

Book Section

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Visual Cultures

Dates:

DateEvent
2006Published

Item ID:

14612

Date Deposited:

28 Oct 2015 13:27

Last Modified:

19 Apr 2016 16:44

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/14612

Edit Record Edit Record (login required)