Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I visited the Tibor de Nagy Gallery for the first time today to view what TimeOUT magazine called the “minimasterpieces” of American artist, Joe Brainard (1942-94). The works, mostly collages, are small, many of which are about the size of playing cards. Playing cards appear as a motif in the exhibited works, as well as roses, butterflies, matchbooks, and hearts. I did not care very much for the drawings of the male torso tattooed with roses, doves, anchors, names of lovers and of poets Brainard, a poet himself, loved. The drawings are decidedly off-hand, and formally uninteresting. Some of the collages are banal. In one collage of a male nude, a pear take the place of the scrotum and the word HEINZ stretches over the shaft of the penis. Perhaps it is a jokey reference to Warhol’s Campbell soup cans, but the joke just makes one groan. A series of collages, “Homage to Keith,” begins provocatively with his lover’s pubic hair and semen but quickly turns into a collection of clichés: a va...